Polish Minister of National Defense, Mariusz Błaszczak, has announced via Twitter that he had changed the choice of the off-road vehicle model for the Polish Army under the Small Mustang program. Instead of the Nissan Navara chosen some time ago, the military will receive Ford Ranger cars, the same ones that have been recently selected by the Argentine army.
The change in the contract by the Polish Ministry of National Defense is dictated by the closing of the Nissan factory in Spain due to the COVID-19 epidemic, and thus the inability to provide vehicles to the Polish Army.
In return, the soldiers will receive Ford Ranger vehicles in the XLT version, which according to the Ministry of National Defense, is a car with a technical specification very similar to Navara, while being slightly longer and having a much larger cargo area. The Ministry of National Defense intends to acquire 485 vehicles and an additional 163 if they deem it necessary.
In the tweet of Minister Błaszczak we can also read that the state budget will save over 2,500,000 PLN (around 559,000 EUR) on the new purchase, which will allow to purchase 13 additional vehicles.
The illustrative photographs do not show the exact version for the Polish Army
The first choice of the Ministry was the Nissan Navara in the Double Cab 190 HP MT Acenta version, with a pick-up body with the option to convert it to a hard top. The value of the previous net contract was close 121,000,000 PLN gross (around 27,000,000 EUR).
The Rangers are to be delivered to the army between 2020 and 2022.
Sources: regiony.tvp.pl, motor1.com
