Is there room under the Blue Oval for Ranger, Bronco and Troller in U.S.?

Ever since Ford dropped the midsize Ranger pickup in late 2011, the company has been pestered regularly and repeatedly about replacing it. The answer has always been there’s too much overlap with the F-150 in price, size and fuel economy.

But things have changed. In the past 12 months:

• The 2015 aluminum-bodied Ford F-150 is bigger than the old steel-bodied truck it replaces. Its price has risen, along with a modest fuel economy gain. The F-150’s starting price of $27,225, including shipping, is up more than $5,000 since Ford dropped the compact Ranger.

• General Motors -- in a rare truck marketing win over Ford -- successfully launched the midsize Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon without cannibalizing the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra. Now GM has three sizes of trucks: midsize, full-size and heavy duty. With the widest variety of trucks in the industry, GM customers can choose the size of truck that best fits their needs and budget and are not forced to buy a truck that is too large.

• Competition in the midsize truck segment is increasing. Mercedes-Benz, in a deal with Nissan, will be selling a pickup. Mercedes has said it has no plans to sell the truck here, but some U.S. dealers want it. Hyundai appears to be ready to greenlight a pickup based on the Santa Cruz concept. A decision is expected this fall, according to Hyundai.

This has left the door to North America open for the version of the Ranger sold overseas and known internally as global Ranger. There also is talk of Ford reintroducing the Bronco nameplate on a vehicle based off the global Ranger platform. That makes perfect sense.

Jeep’s Wrangler is perhaps the only vehicle on sale in North America with no direct competitor. It’s one of Fiat Chrysler’s biggest cash cows and production can’t keep up with demand. When the original Bronco debuted in 1966, it was a direct competitor to the Wrangler’s ancestor, the CJ.

With one move -- bringing the global Ranger to North America and building a Bronco version -- Ford can plug two gaping holes in its lineup with two profitable vehicles. Ford, of course, won’t comment on future product plans. An announcement of this magnitude likely will come at a major auto show.

Here’s what we know about the global Ranger. It’s made of steel, not aluminum, and it’s likely going to stay that way. The profit margin isn’t as fat on smaller, less expensive pickups and SUVs. And aluminum is both more expensive than steel and more difficult and costly to assemble.

Curiously, Ford touts the Ranger’s high-strength steel construction. Perhaps Ford will use one of the new grades of ultra-high strength automotive steel and call it “military grade.”

The global Ranger is body-on-frame. That means the Michigan Assembly plant, which now builds unibody vehicles but previously built body-on-frame SUVs, will revert to body-on-frame -- unless the next-generation of the global Ranger becomes a unibody design.

The current global Ranger is powered by a variety of engines, two diesel and one gasoline engine, and six-speed transmissions, manual or automatic. Just one body style is available, a four-door with a short pickup truck bed.

In April, Ford detailed a $2.5 billion dollar expansion of its Mexico engine and transmission capacity, some of which could be used in a North American Ranger and Bronco.

Ford already successfully tested the waters in North America for a vehicle almost exactly like the global Ranger in size and layout. It was the old body-on-frame Explorer Sport Trac, built between 2000 and 2010. The Sport Trac generated healthy U.S. sales of 439,634 vehicles during its decade-long run.

Ford will be looking for far higher numbers with the Ranger and Bronco. And it could find them. There is a lot of love for the Bronco nameplate -- not the bloated early 1990s O.J. Simpson SUV but the simple, basic and rugged 1960s version, which was as tough as a mountain goat. Prices for original 1960s-era Broncos have been soaring.

Building both vehicles at the Michigan Assembly plant outside Detroit, which will assemble the Focus until 2017, allows Ford to avoid the chicken tax, a 25 percent tariff levied on trucks made overseas.

Ford also could build a version of its Brazil-made Troller in the Michigan plant to take on the next-generation Land Rover Defender and other serious off-road vehicles.

In these days of cheap oil, pickups and SUVs are flying off dealer lots. Who knows whether fuel will still be priced where it is today when some of these Ford vehicles could come to market in three or four years?

Ford CEO Mark Fields faces some tough choices: leave the growing market for smaller pickups and rugged SUVs to others, or invest a couple billion dollars and hope demand for these vehicles is a long-term trend.

Now you know why Fields makes the big bucks.