V-8 loving me was disappointed to find the "base" 2.3 liter Ecoboost in line 4 under the hood of our subject here and not at least Ford's lusty 290 horsepower 3.5 liter DOHC V-6. Disappointed was I up until I started my elongated test drive. That loaf of bread they call "Ecoboost" hauls ass; this thing is freaking fast as hell. So fast, in fact, that I had a hard time staying under the speed limit. A quick check of the specs on the Ecoboost engine in our Explorer shows that it makes 280 horsepower and 310 foot pounds of torque. Oh, mommy. My Tahoe with it's mighty 5.3 liter "LS" V-8 makes 290 horsepower and 330 foot pounds.
Where the Ecoboost engine comes apart, in my opinion, compared to my Tahoe's V-8, is that acceleration is a furious, mad rush whereas the Tahoe's power is smooth and linear. Non jerking starts are at first an exercise in futility until you get used to it. Stab it as you would a non-turbo car and you run the risk of getting whiplash. It's fun at first but quickly gets annoying. Gas mileage estimate for the Ecoboost is a middling 22 mpg. I get about 17-18 with my Tahoe. So, the Explorer Ecoboost is fast and thirsty. This is progress? I shudder to think what kind of gas mileage the twin turbo, 365 horsepower V-6 gets. I had these same issues with the Ford Fusion Ecoboost my family and I rented a couple of years ago.
The interior, again, is cavernous, the fit and finish gorgeous. The trim was very tasteful for any vehicle let alone a base model. Ten, fifteen years ago this would have been an out of the park luxury automobile. Nowadays it's fairly run of the mill. If there's anything I'm missing out on driving older vehicles it's today's interiors. That and convenience features like blue tooth and a back up camera. Our Explorer here wasn't overly equipped with nanny's you don't need like lane change alerts and automatic braking. Some would knock that and site lower resale value. I just look at those bells and whistles as stuff that's going to break.
Despite its size and vast rear passenger and cargo areas behind the wheel the Explorer felt uncomfortably tight. The "dead pedal" is intrusive since it's part of the left wheel well. What? Yup. C'mon, Ford. You did so much right with this thing. Why fall down with that detail - men will be driving this thing too. My right leg kept hitting the steering column too but I'd say that was because I like the wheel cocked down low over my lap.
The biggest thing that the "modern" Ford Explorer has going for it is that it's transcendental - as much as it is an unabashed update of the dreaded family station wagon of yore it also somehow co notates wealth and prestige. How these things have been able to that is beyond me. Perhaps, and this is where the generation gap widens, a lot of the old mom mobile image isn't as negatively construed as it once was. While my experience with my parents growing up was a bit of an extreme, seeing that we were at each other's throats constantly, today's (young) parents have an innate sense of family and have no issue with being seen as mommy's and daddy's. That's very nice. My generation, which skirts the nebulous brick-a-brack between Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers had a somewhat more difficult time with it to say nothing of the Baby Boomer's who all but rejected any semblance of their parents. Nowadays that's not so much the case. And you could do worse than to be seen as a mom or dad driving a modern Ford Explorer.
Despite its size and vast rear passenger and cargo areas behind the wheel the Explorer felt uncomfortably tight. The "dead pedal" is intrusive since it's part of the left wheel well. What? Yup. C'mon, Ford. You did so much right with this thing. Why fall down with that detail - men will be driving this thing too. My right leg kept hitting the steering column too but I'd say that was because I like the wheel cocked down low over my lap.
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