The Ford Ranger Splash Was The Ultimate ’90s Party Truck

In the 1990s, automakers were desperate to put you behind the wheel of something funky, fresh, and new. They’d advertise it to you with a bevy of attractive young people running around the beach with smiles on their faces. The Ford Ranger Splash was out there in the thick of it, a fun-loving truck out for a good time.

It was a truck that landed right in on the bubble of the action sports trend. You’d spot the Ranger Splash on a beach, looking sharp in red with shiny chrome wheels.

It lined up against jet skis, hang gliders, and mountain bikes, because these were the cutting-edge ways to have fun. Everyone was happy, and everyone was having a blast—right there with the Ford Ranger Splash.

Selling To The Kids

The Ranger Splash was a sage marketing move from Ford. The typical Splash buyer was “young, single, with an on-the-go lifestyle.” They were seen as the perfect target for a do-everything, go-everywhere action pickup. To suit these new, exciting customers, Ford needed a hip truck that felt exactly of the moment. With a few smart tweaks, the Ranger became just that for the 1993 model year.

At this time, trucks were still mostly work-a-day vehicles. Colors were drab, and most mirrors and bumpers were either chrome or black plastic,  Those vibes wouldn’t do for what Ford had in mind.

The Splash went for a look that was thoroughly modern for its time. It got a monochromatic design, which basically meant that it got bumpers and mirrors matched to the color of the body. No steelies here, either. The Splash wore handsome chrome or aluminum wheels, depending if you got the 2WD or 4WD version. The suspension was also lowered for better handling and a more car-like feel behind the wheel.

Perhaps most crucially, though, it got a flareside pickup box with an integrated step to boot. This was a first in the compact truck segment. It gave the Ranger nice unique lines compared to other compact pickups, but it also provided plenty of utility. Getting gear in and out of the bed was much easier with the step on the side. Plus, Ford noted that the double-wall construction meant that any dings inside the bed wouldn’t spoil the look of the outside of the truck.

Engines and transmission were in line with the regular Ranger, with multi-point fuel injection standard across the range. A 2.3-liter inline-four was standard, good for 98 horsepower. If you were feeling flush, you could upgrade to the 3.0-liter V6 for 145 hp, or a 4.0-liter V6 for 160 hp. In this era, though, performance wasn’t really front of mind. The desert truck trend would come decades later with the dawn of the Raptor.

And of course, because this was the ’90s, it had decals. They weren’t as bold and bodacious as most, but they did the job. They told everyone you’d bought the fun truck, with their pointy excitable fonts and loud color schemes.

Peak ’90s

With the 1993 model doing well, Ford turned up the wick for 1994 with a pair of concept vehicles. Enter the Sea Splash and Sky Splash. These weren’t production models, but helped support Ford’s efforts to sell these trucks as the perfect choice for the action sports set.

The Sky Splash was audacious. “Attention hang glider buffs!” said Ford’s release. “Ford has developed a concept vehicle just for you.” The features went above and beyond to turn the truck into the perfect hang-glider launcher as per the press release:

The unique Fluorescent Orange Pearl pickup box insert has a
special hang glider launching platform and winch designed especially for the
Ranger. The winch has an auto tensioning device that automatically feeds out
line until the hang glider reaches the proper altitude and is released.

Load-carrying rear stanchions and a front over-the-hood T-Bar are
to support and transport the hang glider. The stanchions have tie-down slots
to help keep the glider securely in place.

Additionally, the Sky Splash had other useful gear like spotlights for loading hang gliders after dark, and a winch for getting your truck to the best possible hang-glider launch spots. It also featured a CB radio, which you could use to chat with your buddy on a hang glider, and a cell phone, for when you inevitably need to call in a rescue when they get stuck in a tree.

Ford also touted an “on-screen NAV system,” which in the nascent era of consumer GPS was more of a wish than a reality. The aircraft-style compass and altimeter were more believable inclusions. “When carrying a hang glider, the destination promises excitement in the air,” said Andrew K. Jacobson, Ford’s truck design director. “But, when there is work to be done, the Sky Splash still delivers—and it’s a head-turner plus when you’re just cruising around town or on the open road.”

The Sea Splash was much the same deal, but it was built for water sports (shut up), not hang gliding. Rather than being built to launch James Bond into the sky on an aerial infiltration mission, it was made to haul watercraft to the beach. Or, you know, a big old canoe, as seen in the press pictures. Really, a compact kayak would have been more modern, but Ford at least painted it to match. It also got a nice blue interior and a CB radio, along with a set of painted blue and white wheels matching the body graphics.

What Happened?

The good times couldn’t last forever. For the Ford Ranger, as in life.

The Ford Ranger Splash trim was dropped for the third generation model in 1998. The world had moved on, and the sun, sea, and sand trope was growing old. But there’s more to it than that.

It wasn’t just that we lost the Ranger Splash. We lost the Suzuki Sidekick, the Daihatsu Feroza. We lost the Jazz cup decals that were on just about every car. We lost our buzz. We lost fun itself.

Turn back the clock and try and remember what it was really like, way back when. That is, assuming you were there.

You see, the 1990s was a time of unbridled joy and enthusiasm in the West. Consumer capitalism was a roaring success. Our die-hard arch-enemies had collapsed, with the Soviet Union collapsing in on itself and leaving America the victor.

The sun shined every day, and our future was bright. We were the masters of the world, and we had the science, money, and smarts to achieve whatever we could dream of. We drove fun cars in bright colors and took up mountain biking, kayaking, or sky driving on the weekends.

They were wild, heady days. You’d grow up, go to school, and learn about the bitter repression of the past. Social upheaval and unrest in the 1960s. The horrors of World War II. But the overwhelming message was that we’d left all that behind. This was the 90s! The bad guys were gone, now, and the future was only getting brighter.

How best to describe this? Here’s presidential candidate Bill Clinton playing saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show”

That’s what the ’90s were like, at least if you were a kid from the suburbs.

Now, I’m not saying life was perfect in the 1990s. Far from it. I was there, and I saw my fair share of shit. But the broad arrow of our culture pointed skyward. There was no question that fortunes were on the rise.

Fast forward just a few years and the scales started to turn. Our consumer utopia was suddenly under attack, and the West found itself embroiled in turmoil across the globe. We plodded on, through recession after recession before a global pandemic hit, and pushed us to the edge.

Now trucks look like this:

We don’t sell fun cars to youthful go-getters in yellow, red, and blue. We sell expensive trucks with aggressive designs so we can stand tall over our fellow citizens. Trucks with “bulletproof” panels. Cars with “bioweapon defense modes.” All to protect us against the new enemies. The bad guys we’re sure are out to get us.

Like other fashion items, cars hold up a mirror to society. They follow prevailing trends just like everything else. We’re not having fun anymore. We’re not dancing to optimistic pop hits like “Steal My Sunshine” or “All Star” these days. The carefree message doesn’t resonate. Nor does the idea of a fun beach truck or a sweet little coupe for the mass market.

Automakers aren’t selling “cute” or “happy” or “beach” anymore. Even if they were, the younger generation doesn’t have the money to purchase new cars anyway. Of course, automakers know this, and know it well. Thus the focus on more silver-grey SUVs for the people that actually show up to dealerships looking to buy.

Ford tried to bring back the Splash in 2022, as a trim package for the then-current Ranger. Don’t remember it? Me neither. It didn’t project “fun” and it lacked the monochrome design of its predecessor. It was a yellow truck with a black stripe and none of the vibe that captured hearts and minds in the ’90s.

The world has moved on. We’ve all moved on.

We Can Go Back

There’s one way to go back to those carefree vibes of the ’90s. We need society to get happier again. Imagine today, but with less turmoil, less pain, and less cost-of-living pressures. Imagine getting your first full-time job in your 20s, and you realize you’ve got some money in the bank for the first time in your life. Maybe you’ll pop down to the dealership, and check out that fun new ride you saw online. The bright yellow sports truck with the smiling people running down the beach.

All I can say is we’re not there yet. But the example of the Ford Ranger, and so many other joyful, stickered-up 90s mobiles, can give us something to aspire to. Bring the joy back to our lives, and we’ll bring the joy back to our cars. I think we can do it.

[Ed Note: I am here for the ’90s nostalgia and here, especially, for that weird moment in time when America won the Cold War and had no idea what to do with itself. I think this is the period that fits in between the chest-beating film “Hunt for Red October” (written before the fall of the Berlin Wall but filmed after) and “The Sum of All Fears” movie in 2022. For more on this listen to this podcast.

But I don’t know if I entirely buy the take that we don’t have fun cars anymore. Toyota has a stick-shift Supra, a rally-inspired hot hatch, the GR86, and a cool and cheaper hybrid Landcruiser coming out in all sorts of bright colors. There’s the Ranger Raptor, the Bronco Raptor, the bright yellow/red/blue Ford Mavericks, fun EVs like the EV6 and Ioniq 5. You can still get a two-door, stickshift Jeep Wrangler and a bright green stickshift Dodge Challenger Swinger. 

All that being said, I think the ’90s Splash is a great truck and nicely typifies what was so bonkers and fun about the era.

Finally, Tupac Shakur’s “Me Against The World” album might offer a nice counterpoint to my remembrance of the 1990s. In many ways, the decade was less ideal than idealized for many, but it was great to live in a time before social media and rampant school shootings if you were a kid in your average American suburb. – MH]

Image credits: Ford, eBay