Declasse Rancher

The Rancher's the off-road workhorse: a two-door pick-up based on the Blazer K5, and the kind of vehicle that makes more sense in Grassrivers and Mount Kalaga than it does on Ocean Beach.

One of the oldest names in the series

The Rancher's been in Grand Theft Auto since the 3D era started. It was in Grand Theft Auto III, it was in San Andreas, where it did a lot of work out in the countryside and in police hands, and versions of it have turned up in the mainline games since. Very few vehicle names in this series have stuck around that long.

That's mostly because the truck it's based on has aged just as well. The Chevrolet K5 Blazer is a short two-door body on a full-size truck chassis with four-wheel drive underneath, and nobody's really improved on it for the job it does.

Why it belongs on this map

Leonida's the first Grand Theft Auto map where a truck like this has an obvious use beyond looking the part. Wetland tracks, park roads and the farmland around Ambrosia are all places where ground clearance counts for more than power. Ground clearance is just the space under the truck, and on a rutted park track or a flooded one that's what keeps you from getting stuck.

It suits the setting beyond the terrain too. The lifted two-door truck is a real fixture in rural Florida, and the game's already shown its interest in that world with the Thrillbilly Mud Club sequence in trailer one. A Rancher's what you turn up to a mud club in.

Getting your guns to the swamp

With the weapon storage system, where bigger weapons ride along in your vehicle, a truck that can get to places a car can't is suddenly worth more. Getting your loadout to the edge of a wetland isn't something the series has ever asked you to think about before.

What isn't known

We haven't seen whether there's a police version, like there's been in earlier games. No specs have been published, and Rockstar hasn't said anything about how it handles off-road.