I miss my old ranger. It had the 4-banger, but the manual was wound so tight I would beat Z71s to ~40...after that, though, they wiped the floor with me.
I also got my best "written warning" from a police officer in it...103 in a 45mph zone.
This was back in the day when leasing to the public was a new thing...people weren't doing it yet. You could get a Neon for $59 a month! My '97 XLT was $95 a month.
However, 3 weeks before my lease was up, I rolled it on the way home from a dealership after test-driving the Jeep I ended up buying...I think my Ranger could smell the other truck on me and got jealous. Ended up totaled. The insurance company basically bought the truck, so I got my security deposit back.
Funny thing is, after that accident, a friend of a friend also rolled their Ranger. After I found this out, I called this mutual friend in-between us who also had a ranger and said "Your turn!"
2 weeks later, he had a head-on collision.
Out of all 3 of our accidents, though, the only violations handed out to any of us was the ticket for obstructing a traffic signal...because when I landed on my roof, the back of the truck was sticking up in the air, and I was blocking a "Merging Traffic" sign, and the friend-of-a-friend got a trespassing ticket...after rolling over 4-times down the drop-off over the side of the road, they landed in someone's yard. No "fault" points were assessed to any of our records.
Mine was red, too. It was a great red...never looked dirty, even in Wisconsin winter. I was with the insurance inspector when he came to decide the fate of the truck, and even though he wrote it off, he said "Wow...the condition was great...if this thing wasn't in the accident, you could almost have sold it as new!"