The Closest Thing To A Factory-Built Hot Rod Ford Ranger Is This Street Truck You Forgot Existed

The good ol’ Ford Ranger is one of the most famous trucks to have ever been unleashed on American roads. There’s so much that was right about the Ranger, from its compact size and insane durability to its handsome styling and excellent value. Ford Rangers find themselves in all sorts of wild predicaments, which has helped propel the nameplate to Internet icon status. But for some, one thing that kept the Ranger from true greatness was that Ford never truly embraced street truck culture with the platform. Well, here’s the next best thing to a factory Ranger street machine: The SLP Engineering Ford Ranger Thunderbolt, a 6.5-second zero-to-sixty machine wrapped in a slick body kit.

Back in May, I wrote about how Ford Ranger enthusiasts are equipping their trucks with the V8 engines that Ford had never officially paired with a production Ranger. As it turns out, the V8 engine from a Ford Explorer bolts right up to a Ranger, though the process of actually getting it all to work does take some time and effort. While I was researching that story, I found out that Ford had considered a hot rod Ranger in the same vein as the Ford SVT F-150 Lightning. The SVT Ranger Lightning Bolt was the street truck that Ranger fans had been begging for, but it never reached production, ensuring that none of the original Ford Ranger’s three generations would ever leave the factory with anything meatier than a 4.0-liter V6.

The high-performance pickup truck went through a revival in the 1990s and the 2000s. In the past, trucks like the Dodge D100 CSS and the Dodge Li’l Red Express Truck lit up the streets and their tires. The street/muscle truck formula was similar to the muscle car recipe; the trucks got ginormous souped-up engines that laid down some serious performance, slick bodykits, bold graphics, and vivid paint. But unlike muscle cars, street trucks offered genuine practicality. Ever tried getting a couch home in a Firebird? Not recommended.

The street truck hit a whole new level of legendary in the 1990s thanks to entries like the GMC Syclone, the Dodge Dakota R/T, the Chevrolet 454SS, and the Ford SVT F-150 Lightning. Suddenly, what had been a niche began to have a little more appeal. These trucks often looked sinister, eschewing chrome and color for black on black. These trucks could beat sports cars in a straight line, didn’t cost a million bucks, and could still haul a load.

The old Ranger didn’t really have a true hot rod version. Sure, the 4.0-liter V6 made pretty healthy power towards the end of production, and the Ranger Splash looked radical, but the Ranger didn’t get the SVT treatment like the Mustang and the F-150. Street Legal Performance (SLP) wasn’t going to let that stand. While the Ranger Thunderbolt didn’t get V8 power, the folks of SLP did make it into a surprisingly fast little street truck.

Big Power In A Little Truck

There were a couple of distinct times when Ford looked at the Ranger and thought that it really needed V8 power. One time, MotorTrend writes, happened in the mid-1990s with the Ford Special Vehicle Team (SVT).

Formed in 1991, SVT functioned as a sort of skunkworks to investigate ways Ford could leverage a niche of driving enthusiasts who crave power, style, and handling. The branch made its work public in 1992 at the Chicago Auto Show with the 1993 SVT Mustang Cobra and SVT F-150 Lightning.

In 1996, the team decided to bring some of that hot rod goodness down to the Ranger. If greenlit, the SVT V8 Ranger could have gone on sale in 1998, selling as many as 5,000 units a year.

To make the SVT Ranger V8, the team at SVT raided the Explorer and Mustang parts bins, grafting on the front end from the Explorer, wheels from the Mustang Cobra R, the 5.0-liter Cobra OHV V8 from pre-1994 Mustang, a gentle lowering kit, and meaty tires. It even had a Tremec TR-3550 five-speed manual.

MotorTrend‘s review made the SVT Ranger V8 sound like it was almost uncontrollable, which is hilarious. Ford even considered putting it into production, and it was estimated that the hot rod Ranger might have run about $20,000. Sadly, the fact that I do not have one of these in my fleet right now is illustrative of what happened with the SVT Ranger V8.

SVT Makes A 420 HP Ranger

Yet, the SVT folks never gave up. According to a March 2003 issue of Hot Rod magazine, SVT wanted to look into the idea of a super Ranger again. As the story goes, SVT boss John Coletti looked at the SVT F-150 Lightning and wondered if it was feasible to bring that level of performance to the smaller Ranger. The Ranger Lightning Bolt project was born.

Hot Rod notes the Lightning Bolt was a return to the old-school muscle car, where you put the biggest engine in the smallest body, then just do your best to put the power down. And oh, was it given a stupid amount of power. Under the hood sat a 5.4 Triton V8, and on top of that was a body-color-matched supercharger. Output? The snarling beast was good for 420 HP and 480 lb-ft of torque, frankly nutty for something the size of a Ranger with nothing but an empty box over the rear axle.

This is a huge engine for such a small truck, and SVT got it to fit by stealing the control arms and steering knuckles from the F-150 Lightning. They also lowered the Ranger Lightning Bolt two inches so the heavy engine rode closer to the ground. SVT managed to fit the engine in the bay without modifying the hood, but they did need to make some metal changes to the firewall and the transmission tunnel. The driveshaft and the rear axle were taken from the F-150 Lightning as well, and SVT fitted a beautiful custom fuel cell behind the rear end. The fit was so tight that the battery had to be relocated to the truck’s bed.

Backing up the power is a set of beefy tires. Narrow 18-inch wheels shod in 235-section-width tires take up residence up front, while a pair of 335 meats attempt to hook up with pavement in the rear.

Bringing the thunder was a set of two-inch headers, three-inch pipes, and Borla mufflers. I highly recommend watching the MotorWeek video above because, honestly, what a noise. V8s don’t always make me feel all warm and fuzzy, but this one does!

MotorWeek noted a quarter-mile time of 13.5 seconds at 101 mph, which is impressive when you remember that the Lightning Bolt spends most of its time converting rubber into smoke.

Sadly, SVT admitted right from the jump that the Lightning Bolt was unlikely to reach production, and they were right. But this also wasn’t entirely unheard of. SVT was known for making insane concept vehicles just for the heck of it, including even a Boss 604 Mustang. That’s about 10 liters for those of you on the metric system.

A Ranger Street Truck You Can Buy

Thankfully, while Ford never put a super Ranger into production, there is something that you can buy that sort of comes close.

For decades, Street Legal Performance (SLP) has served a niche in the tuning world for bolt-on parts with emissions certification and a promise not to void your factory warranty. The company was founded by drag racer, hot-rodder, and so-called “speed merchant” Ed Hamburger. He wasn’t just known for driving fast, but selling parts for other people to drive fast.

SLP prides itself on mods that are legal in all states, and many of its builds have been blessed by the base car’s original manufacturer. One famous example is the Pontiac SLP Trans Am Firehawk (above), an SLP hot rod your local GM dealer would happily sell you complete with a full factory warranty.

SLP’s engineers didn’t just play with pony cars, either – they breathed a little fire into trucks and SUVs, too. As Autoweek notes, SLP’s run of making GM F-body-based Firehawk cars was coming to an end in 2002. The death of the F-body was a big deal for SLP, as they accounted for 96 percent of SLP’s sales of 14,000 units in 2001. Thankfully, SLP had an idea. It would just move over to Ford and put its mark on a truck.

SLP looked at the Ranger, which was America’s best-selling small pickup truck at the time. The tuner would introduce the SLP Ford Ranger Thunderbolt. This was largely a cosmetic package designed to make your Ranger look like the F-150 Lightning’s little sibling. This base package, which was priced at $1,499, got you a fake hood scoop, new badging, a body kit, new wheel center caps, and a monochromatic grille.

The Thunderbolt package was applied only to trucks painted white, black, or red, and you had to order option codes 31L and D9P to get it. If you were ordering the SLP package as part of a factory order, your Ranger was shipped from the factory to SLP in Kentucky, where the mods would be applied over a few days, then the truck was delivered to your dealer.

SLP offered option packages to go on top of the base package, and this included, per the Ranger Station:

Thunderbolt Level I

• Front Fascia Fog Lamps
• Soft Tonneau Cover
• Rear Lip Spoiler

Thunderbolt Level II

• Front Fascia Fog Lamps
• Soft Tonneau Cover
• Rear Lip Spoiler
• Performance Package

Thunderbolt Level III

• Front Fascia Fog Lamps
• Performance Package
• Hard Tonneau Cover

Other goodies included a choice of two aftermarket wheel sets, a spoiler, new stabilizer bars, floor mats, and even SLP keychains.

Performance modifications were extremely mild, consisting of a cat-back exhaust and a cold air intake. When applied to the Vulcan 3.0-liter V6, it was good for six horsepower or so, bumping 154 HP to about 160 HP with 190 lb-ft of torque, an extra 10 pounds of twist over stock. Buyers modding their Cologne 4.0-liter V6 Rangers saw their power increase from 207 HP to 222 HP, but torque was unchanged.

If you bought a Ford Ranger XLT SuperCab 4.0 V6 and checked every SLP option, you’d spend an additional $3,000 for a total of $23,500. Those mild changes actually made a significant difference; in 2001, MotorWeek tested a Ford Ranger Edge with the 4.0 V6, and it stomped out 60 mph in 8.1 seconds on the way to a 16.3-second quarter-mile at 86 mph.

In MotorWeek‘s hands, the SLP Thunderbolt dispatched 60 mph in 6.5 seconds and finished the quarter in 14.9 stopwatch ticks at 95 mph in (video above). MotorWeek didn’t explain the huge difference over stock (and it’s notable that both trucks had the same cabs), but does say that the mild mods really woke up the V6 and improved throttle response. MotorWeek‘s Ranger Edge review claimed the same engine was slow to rev. So, maybe that’s all the SOHC V6 needed to be even more of a beast.

So, was the SLP Thunderbolt as cool as a V8? Nah. And it didn’t have the absurdity of the SVT projects, either. Still, the SLP Thunderbolt had real, tangible improvements over a base Ranger.

SLP said it was hoped to sell 3,000 to 5,000 Thunderbolts in 2002, and then another 6,500 examples in 2003. True production numbers, however, are unknown. The SLP Ranger project lasted only from 2002 to 2003, so sales may not have been sustainable enough to keep production going.

Whatever happened, SLP gave up on the Ranger project entirely. The remaining Thunderbolt parts stock was sold to Roush, Roush then sold the parts to Hillbank Motorsports, and Hillbank offloaded them on eBay for pennies on the dollar. Ouch.

Rare And Well-Loved

And so, the 2003 Ford Ranger Thunderbolt that will sell at Mecum on July 9 in Florida is a pretty rare ride, and apparently a well-loved one. It looks like whoever originally ordered this truck “ran it through the garden,” so to speak. It has the rear spoiler, fog lights, and body color rear bumper options. The truck also appears to have the aftermarket exhaust and even the Thunderbolt floor mats.

The truck appears to be a relatively well-cared-for example. The odometer shows 111,240 miles, which suggests that someone enjoyed this truck. That’s really neat. There haven’t been many of these sold on the market lately, but most seem to sell for under $15,000, which makes sense. They’re rare and cool, but at the end of the day, the Thunderbolt is still only a mildly modified Ranger.

I’m still disappointed that 90s-era Ford was never crazy enough to put the super Rangers in production, but I’m thrilled the Ford of today is willing to sell you a 700 HP supercharged single-cab work truck F-150, so there’s that. If you love old Rangers as much as I do, and want to get the closest thing to a factory-built hot rod Ranger, this Thunderbolt might be right up your alley.