AUTO REVIEW: Ford Gets Back in the Oversize SUV Business

For a while, Ford found gold in every truck it touched.

Fast-selling Explorers, Expeditions and F-150s kept the cash registers in Dearborn, Mich., spinning.

As you may recall, the heavy-metal Expedition and Chevy Tahoe ignited the oversize SUV craze that filled U.S. roads with giant two-box trucks in the ‘90s.

Anyone looking for America back then could probably find it in a lumbering, eight-passenger, four-wheel-drive SUV.

But, as with all fashion trends, auto preferences can be fleeting.

In the dark days of 2008 — when Ford rushed to reinvent itself as it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy — product planners decided the Expedition was about as relevant as the belt pack.

They kept it in the lineup but figured that younger, hipper buyers wanted much smaller urban wagons such as the agile new Escape crossover.

The Expedition lived alone somewhere outside the mainstream, its boom days faded from 233,000 sales in 1999 to about 32,000 a decade later.

Last year, though, Ford planners must have realized that, gulp, maybe they wrote off gas-swilling, pickup-based SUVs too quickly.

Although the full-size segment shrank by about half during the recession, it is slowly growing again, and GM absolutely owns it now with the big SUVs built in Arlington, Texas.

So the old man is back, his clothes neatly pressed and clinging to new muscles.

And against long odds, the metallic gray 2015 Expedition Platinum I had recently still had a lot of strut left.

You’ll recognize it instantly. Still immensely square and slab-sided, the Expedition wears a crisp new three-bar grille up front with contemporary projector-style headlamps.

High-end models also get running boards that extend and retract automatically when the doors open or close — a feature I first saw on Cadillac Escalades a few years back.

To my jaded eyes, the flat, featureless sides of the 6,000-pound Expedition didn’t seem any different.

And in back, you will still find enormous vertical taillamps and a rear hatch roughly the size of a picnic table.

But thanks to the new grille, hidden running boards and fine-looking 22-inch wheels shod with 285/45 tires, the Expedition actually looks refreshed — sort of tanned and lightly pumped up.

It could be an inner glow. Beneath the Expo’s slightly raised hood, buyers will find the turbocharged 365-horsepower EcoBoost V-6 that has powered the F-150 pickup for the last few years — the most significant addition to the truck.

By swapping the 3.5-liter V-6 for the Expedition’s tired 5.4-liter V-8, Ford infused the big SUV with 55 more horsepower and torque — and greater power at a lower rpm.

Stomp the throttle with the traction control off, and the Expedition can actually smoke its rear tires, which is a bit like watching an elephant tap dance while juggling.

It just seems improbable.

More importantly, the EcoBoost Expo will sprint to 60 mph in 6.4 seconds, according to Car and Driver, three-tenths of a second quicker than a Chevy Tahoe equipped with a 5.3-liter V-8.

The Expedition also has greater towing capability, able to pull 9,200 pounds — all from 213 cubic inches of heavily huffed engine and a six-speed automatic.

Like the Expo in those Car and Driver tests, the one I had was a four-wheel-drive version, meaning it was lugging at least 200 pounds of extra weight.

Nonetheless, even fairly casual brushes of the accelerator brought pretty satisfying surges of power.

But don’t expect any massive gains in fuel economy.

Mine was rated at 15 miles per gallon in the city and 20 on the highway, about 2 mpg better than the old 5.4-liter V-8.

But a similarly equipped Tahoe with the 5.3-liter V-8 is rated at 16 mpg in the city and 22 on the highway.

Still, the EcoBoost Expo is more fun to drive, at least on smooth pavement.

Though the Expedition sports an independent rear suspension, it felt slightly fidgety on smooth pavement and pretty bouncy on the rough stuff.

As a much older design than the all-new Tahoe, it also seemed less solid to me than the Chevy.

But Ford tweaked the truck where it could without starting over, and the Expedition benefits from well-weighted steering and a reasonably composed chassis.

No three-ton behemoth will ever be agile, but the Expo was fairly easy to drive in traffic once I got accustomed to its high-rise “command” seating.

So don’t attempt high-speed curves or bat turns in the 6-foot-5-inch tall Expo, which tended to plow in moderate-speed corners and leaned some.

I wasn’t sure what to conclude about its interior. Though the truck I had was a pre-production model with no window sticker, similarly equipped models cost around $64,000.

While the interior was definitely upgraded for 2015, it didn’t quite feel near-luxury to me, which is how I would define a $60,000 vehicle.

The perforated, neatly sectioned oxblood-colored leather seats in mine looked great, and the second row of seats offered good legroom and excellent headroom.

Also, the truck’s sleek-looking black headliner and totally redesigned instrument panel and center stack added flair to an overall design that’s more than eight years old.

An 8-inch display screen now dominates the center stack, and the instrument panel was ablaze in color. We also need to give Ford credit for including real buttons and switches in the center stack for the climate-control and audio systems.

But the grainy black-plastic dash and door panels — both of which felt carried over — kept me from really settling into any lap of luxury.

That said, I give Ford pretty high marks for the Expedition, which will supposedly get a new aluminum body in the next couple of years.

The company managed to make an old — albeit revitalized — SUV competitive with Chevy’s all-new Tahoe.

———

AT A GLANCE: 2015 Ford Expedition Platinum 4X4

Type of vehicle: Full-size, eight-passenger, four-wheel-drive SUV

Price as tested: Pre-production model with no window sticker, but similarly equipped models cost about $64,000

Fuel economy: 15 mpg city, 20 mpg highway

Weight: 6,155 pounds

Engine: Twin-turbocharged, direct-injected 3.5-liter V-6 with 365 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque

Transmission: Six-speed automatic

Performance: 0 to 60 mph in 6.4 seconds

— SOURCES: Ford Motor Co.; Car and Driver

This article appeared in print in the February 17th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.