Marcos Baumgart and Gareth Woolridge will debut Neil Woolridge Motorsport’s new NWM Evo Plus car at next week’s South African Safari Rally.

It is the successor to the Ford Ranger T1+ that the team had been fielding since 2023. The Ranger was originally developed in partnership with Ford Performance and M-Sport, competing at the 2024 Dakar Rally with Woolridge and Nani Roma, before M-Sport and Ford split off to build the Ford Raptor. NWM continued to field the Ranger, albeit with some modifications to the bodywork, while client Past-Racing also uses it.

The Evo Plus also features the Ford logo on the grille and a similar pickup truck exterior to the Ranger, albeit with redesigned side pods. Underneath, it has a brand new chassis that is narrower, built around a wider 2.3-meter wheel track.

Due to the smaller chassis, the engine and gearbox have been moved back 150 millimeters to fit; the former is a 3.5-liter V6 Ford EcoBoost twin-turbocharged gasoline motor, while the latter is a SADEV SC924 Evo. Although the V6 will be used by NWM in races, customers can also order the Evo Plus with a five-liter V8 Coyote naturally aspirated engine.

SADEV also provided the steering rack, drivetrain, and SP08 differential. The latter uses an epicyclic gear system that has greater load distribution, a priority since T1+ cars have larger wheels. The steering rack has longer tie rods.

The control arms are wider than their predecessors by 100 millimeters on each side. Their mounting points have been placed at different angles to improve handling and anti-dive and anti-squat on the suspension. The mounting point for the damper, the latter a new product developed by BOS Suspension, has also been tweaked.

“Two major points we identified for improvement on our current NWM vehicle was firstly our suspension geometry from a performance point of view, and secondly our differentials from a reliability point of view,” Neil Woolridge explained. “In this, we took a step back to analyze exactly where we want to improve, what type of car we want to offer to the market, and how we can ensure our car keeps winning races and championships around the world.

“Well, as one can imagine with ingenuity and passion in our veins, we got carried away in our design phase, which has consequently led us down the road to our all-new NWM Evo Plus.”

In the cockpit, the dashboard has been lowered by 50 mm to improve field of view. The air vent has a new layout too. Various features inside like rotary switches have also had their positions moved to make activating them a quicker process.

Other components include a Motec M1 ECU, a 495-liter fuel cell from Aerotec Laboratories, and six-piston Brembo calipers.

“We can proudly offer a top-level vehicle that will be competitive anywhere in the world,” Neil continued. “It is made with the best-quality products in the world, at a far more affordable price than our competitors. These days, with motorsport getting more and more expensive, we really set out to make sure that our car has the highest level of build quality, reliability and performance for the driver that wants to win races, or just go out and have fun. Yet it is still available at a price that our competitors producing rally raid cars in other countries simply cannot match, and that’s a big feather in our cap.”

Gareth Woolridge won the 2023 South African Rally-Raid Championship with the Ranger. Baumgart usually races a Prodrive Hunter in the W2RC’s Ultimate class, though he entered the most recent round in Abu Dhabi as a Taurus driver.

Featured image credit: Neil Woolridge Motorsport