WTF 20-70k range Midsize trucks? 

Actually, the Dodge Dakota sold pretty well moving more than 100,000 units in half of it's 26 year production run. Including a couple of years where it significantly outsold the Tacoma. In 2000 the Dakota had it's best sales year with about 177,000 sold while Toyota sold 147,000 of their truck. Meanwhile, Ford sold 330,000 Rangers beating the other two combined. While the historic numbers would seem to suggest there is a large and still untapped market for smaller pickups the thing is SUV's and crossovers just weren't as big a factor back then. And not only were price differences between compact trucks and full size trucks significant, compact trucks were truly affordable. These days if someone is being asked to spend 40 grand they have a lot of great options they didn't have not so long ago. I think overall Ram would have done better with a new Dakota than Jeep has with the Gladiator but not by leaps and bounds. The potential total market share for mid size and compact trucks is just smaller than it used to be. If we use the best sales years since since 2000 for the Gladiator, Colorado, Canyon, Ridgeline, Frontier, Ranger and Tacoma we find that approximately 664,000 trucks were sold in all their best sales years combined. In just the year 2000 the Ranger, Tacoma and Dakota sold a combined 654,000 units and it was only the Dakotas best sales year! So three trucks in the year 2000 came within 10,0000 units of selling as many as seven modern midsize trucks. If we throw out the Ridgeline which didn't exist (neither did the Gladiator but the Dakota was still a Chrysler, now Stelleantis group product) then just those three trucks outsold six modern midsize trucks in their absolute best sales years combined by 42,000 units. If we throw in the 2000 model Chevy S10's 211,000 (not it's best year either) sales into the mix now we're at 865,000 compact truck sales.

Currently on the fence between 2.7 Ranger and 2.3 manual Bronco. It’s a second vehicle so it’s basically just for me.

For me it would be the ranger 1st but the Nissan would be in my price range

The price increase for these trucks is not a head scratcher. Have you looked at your cost of living lately...gas, insurance, etc? The manufactures are paying more too, for transportation, overhead, material cost, etc. As a business, are they going to try to make their percentages back? I would if i ran the business. The real problem is with "expense of living" increasing in the past 20 years, in particular the last 4. OUR WAGES have not increased to scale. If they did, we could afford the same houses, food, AND CARS. Most people are now priced out, and the reason isn't a headscratcher, but actually really clear. Unfortunately a lot of people don't want to have this conversation and address the problem head on. FACT is between 2016 and 2020, almost everyone was doing better. Now let's scratch our heads and think why.....don't take too long or maybe you don't know what you're talking about. I don't mean you all terrain nation! Thanks for the good content! Still waiting for my ranger raptor allocation to be built. My dealer told me August....hope that's truth.

I'll be trading in my AWD Maverick for a Ranger Tremor (I'd rather ford add the Wildtrak trim to the Ranger since its a cousin to the Bronco at MAP)

Ford trucks blow.