OREANDA-NEWS. December 22, 2015. The class-defining new Ford Ranger garnered top scores from Malaysian and Thai judges at the inaugural 2015 ASEAN Car of the Year (ACOTY) award recently held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“We are extremely proud that the new Ford Ranger was named ‘Pick-up Truck of the Year’ in the inaugural ASEAN Car of the Year award ceremony. This achievement and honor really highlights Ranger’s ‘Built Ford Tough’ credentials and solidifies its position as the benchmark by which all other pickup trucks are judged,” said Mark Kaufman, president, Ford ASEAN.

“Leveraging our proud truck heritage and global expertise in the pick-up truck segment, we’ve designed Ranger to take on the extreme environments that customers can experience daily in the ASEAN region. From class leading 800mm water wading to exceptional payload capacity, Ranger really is Built Ford Tough.”

Organized for the first time, the inaugural 2015 ACOTY judging panel comprises motoring journalists from Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia as well as industry experts including insurers and third-party warranty service providers from across the ASEAN region.

For a vehicle to be eligible for the country level awards, the judging panel of each country nominates vehicles that are officially available for sale in their respective countries. Upon tabulation from the ACOTY committee, the three most nominated cars in each category formed the finalists for each country’s twenty two categories.

To provide a holistic evaluation of each vehicle, an industry-first scoring mechanism that combines the scores from the judging panel, industry experts, as well as customers to cover the full scope of vehicle ownership was employed. This was created to reflect a vehicle’s strength and weakness in terms of reliability rating, depreciation ratio, as well as an ownership experience.

The new Ranger was rated highest by judges from Malaysia and Thailand, making it ‘Pick-up Truck of the Year’ in Malaysia and Thailand categories. Introduced in ASEAN in 2015, the new Ranger is built at Ford’s AutoAlliance Thailand joint-venture in Rayong, Thailand.