Automotive industry is like a soap opera, their relationship is so complicated even the five thousand years old American show Young & Restless looks like a piece of cake. Ford and GM bought every car brand which was left alone and they were very close to be bankrupted. Now hopefully they started to recover and focus on their main brand which they forgot for two decades.And now we have the new Ford Explorer, one decade ago it was one of the worst SUV was built on planet, may in solar system also. It was less reliable than Kia and I don’t know why one decade ago Ford Explorer had many problems. I guess at those times Ford was focused on buying European brands which were left from GM and forgot that they were making cars!
Let’s go back to new Ford Explorer, in my opinion that’s a very well made and quite nice looking SUV for American market not for Europe! When I read the press documents, I saw that Explorer will have 2,0lt EcoBoost engine which produces 240 horsepower! That’s awful (American expression)! This engine as awful as olive oil in your kitchen.
Olive oil is not very common in US, that’s normal because it is produced quite faraway from US. And people started to prefer olive oil more but still it is something new to Americans. Unfortunately it is a bit expensive also due to transportation costs :(
But don’t worry this new European 2,0lt awful engine is not like that :) Ford Explorer with 2,0lt EcoBoost engine is a like a olive oil bottle in McDonald’s kitchen. For last two thousand years in US market small engines were something really small and it was not something to prefer when you have the huge V8 engines. Hopefully Ford woke up and mated this new European engine with Explorer but this is not whole story. 
Ford was the previous owner of Land Rover and in 2004 Land Rover introduced a new technology called Terrain Response. In basic terms, you look at the road in front and select similar icon on the know and car is reacting to this preferred road condition. This made off road driving very easy for normal people. Interestingly while they were selling Land Rover to Tata, some documents left actually some symbols left from Land Rover.The new terrain management programme in Explorer has a know like Land Rover and it has the same symbols! I don’t criticize Ford, but come on why didn’t you replace the symbols with different ones. They are the same ones which were used in Land Rover Discovery, Range Rover Sport and Range Rover! You have many design people in Ford, just tell them to design something different and that’s all.
The rest of the new Explorer is quite good, it has very European features like collision warning system, radar guided cruise control, inflatable seatbelts (this is new toy), LED lights, blind spot warnings and similar things which you can find in Ford Mondeo.Ford did a really good job but I still won’t buy an Explorer, sorry the brand image still have some problems. I prefer Mondeo, if I have to have a Ford badge! I really looking forward to hear the feedbacks from European engine in US :)
And Sony is not making climate control systems, don’t be confused ;)
Pictures Copyrights;
Land Rover, Ford and Olive
