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Today’s high-performance UTVs like the Polaris RZR and Can-Am Maverick are ultra-capable powerhouses of off-road performance engineering. The 2002 Polaris Ranger I just picked up is more like a motorized wheelbarrow by comparison. In many ways, it’s the perfect vehicle for me. I love open-air low-speed lawn cruising and I hate huge screens in cars. The closest thing to a gauge this thing has is an hour counter to tell you how long the engine’s been running. Oh, and the headlight switch lights up when the lights are on.
Being able to walk off the street, finance a 1000cc turbocharged performance UTV, and go bounding off into the woods at the speed of a trophy truck is a relatively new phenomenon. One that I reckon has done more harm to the off-road scene than good, but we can kick that hornet’s nest around another time.
The Polaris Ranger is and always has been focused on utility rather than driving performance. UTV stands for “utility task vehicle,” after all. It was born to be a commercial and agricultural vehicle, doing jobs our ancestors might have done with a horse and cart, going places on big properties that a pickup truck can’t easily reach.
I found this neat little piece of context on Polaris’ Ranger history page:
“Mitchell Johnson, son of David Johnson—one of the founders of Polaris, remembers how the initial idea came to be. ‘We had talked from time to time about making a side-by-side ATV for a driver and passenger. One day, Edgar Hetteen [a Polaris founder] came to my office and said we should make a 6×6 in a side-by-side configuration, he loved the machine but wanted to ride beside his wife Hannah.’
Four concepts were explored as two important features were debated—ride-in vs. ride-on and handlebar vs. steering wheel. Eventually, the shown concept was selected, with a ride-in and steering wheel design, and ultimately, became the first Ranger.”
Here’s the final concept design they went with:
The six-wheeled Ranger made its commercial debut in 1999 with four-wheeled versions in the mix around then, too. The first major innovation, electronic fuel injection, hit the market in 2005. I’m not exactly sure what model year mine was sold as, since I don’t have any paperwork for it, but the VIN plate sets the build date as 2002. Sadly, I am quite sure it does not have EFI. The choke knob on the dashboard was the only feature I was disappointed to see when my wife, aunt, and cousins helped me extract it from the barn it’d been sleeping in for years last weekend.
Carburetors aren’t necessarily the worst, but having the engine’s air and fuel mixture measured mechanically tends to be a bit more touchy than when a computer does it. (See, I’m not categorically anti-technology). My ’02 Ranger’s carb is feeding a 500cc single-cylinder engine, which has a CVT that can be put in high or low range. It also has push-button all-wheel drive and a locking differential for moving through slop. I was somewhat surprised to find that it also has four-wheel disc brakes and headlights with both high- and low-beam settings.
Luxuries include two cupholders (!) and that’s it. The bench seat is meant for three people, but at some point in this thing’s 22-year life, somebody cut the middle seatbelt with a blade, so I removed the buckle to get it out of the way. The seat easily pops up to reveal the engine and battery, which is nice for service access. It’s not as nice for passenger comfort—that sucker is very loud.
There are two other fun features I’m hoping to put to work soon: a Warn winch up front, and a dumper box on the back. The little pickup bed is on gas struts (which probably need to be replaced). So in theory, when you throw a latch, the bed lifts to eject whatever you’re carrying. A spec sheet I found says it can carry 1,000 pounds and tops out at around 40 mph (probably not when saddled with half a ton of cargo). There’s a little trailer hitch receiver, and the towing capacity is 1,500 pounds. Sounds ambitious to me.
Poking around this old Ranger has been a lot of fun. Everything is so exposed and obvious; you can appreciate everything from the suspension geometry to the engine and transmission configuration just by looking at it. The frame is pretty much just a few bits of square steel. It’s barely evolved from a lawn tractor.
I’m not the biggest fan of recreational UTVs and would not have gone out and bought one on my own, but this particular one has some sentimental value. My grandfather ran a construction and property maintenance company for a long time, and this rig was originally purchased to do landscaping duty at the estates of ultra-wealthy Hudson Valley residents. I worked for the company a few summers in middle school and remembered dying for the chance to drive it—only I got to ride in the bed. When I was lucky.
When it aged out of commercial duty, my uncle had it on his property in Vermont where it did light agricultural work scrambling up and down his slopey acreage. Sadly, he passed away a few years back, and the Ranger had been collecting spiderwebs in my aunt’s barn since about 2021. She asked me if I wanted to take it, and of course, I’m powerless to resist a free, running vehicle. I gave her some cash anyway, for the sum of repairs she had done to it before it went into storage. The machine only weighs 1,100 pounds, so it was an easy tow on a U-Haul trailer behind a loaner Tacoma.
Being able to bring this home is definitely a benefit of living on a few acres in the boondocks. This UTV would not be much fun as a trail runner or expedition vehicle, but it’ll be great for running around and maintaining our family properties. The big field where we do all our “Will It Dog?” photo shoots connects to my father-in-law’s spread, so now when his Golden Retriever escapes and comes to visit my dog (weekly) I’ll be able to load up the pup and drive him back through the brush!
Local dog shuttling, downed-tree removal, and cross-property stuff-hauling is all I can really do with it from a practical and legal perspective. UTVs live in kind of a weird grey zone in New York—this one’s too big to be registered as an ATV (like a quad), but tough to classify as an agricultural vehicle to the DMV. So even if there were off-road trails I could tow it to nearby, I couldn’t legally drive this on them. Luckily for me, I can simply go into the woods behind my house and make my own!
I don’t have any modding plans for this, but if any of you readers have seen cool old-school Ranger-building ideas, let me know. I mounted a Seinfeld-era NY license plate on the back for fun, ordered a gas cap to replace its current leaky one, and might mount some LED off-road lights I’ve got. I ordered a tractor triangle, too—should make it feel more farmy. Somebody made that wooden bed extender a long time ago.
I think I’ll try to hit the steel that’s got surface rust with some kind of corrosion inhibitor to prevent it from deteriorating too rapidly. I’m tempted to paint the plastic in a Jurrasic Park livery as some people suggested on Instagram, but the deep green is already pretty decent-looking.
For now, I’m just going to run a few tanks of ethanol-free fuel through it and see how it feels while I embrace living in the country.
