Ford strikes platinum with 2016 Explorer SUV

Nov 12
11:43

2015

carol leung

carol leung

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The best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson's "Thriller," has been certified platinum 29 times. The platinum credit card by American Express h...

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The best-selling album of all time,Ford strikes platinum with 2016 Explorer SUV Articles Michael Jackson's "Thriller," has been certified platinum 29 times. The platinum credit card by American Express has no spending limits and qualifiers can get more cash simply by asking.In popular culture, platinum is better than gold, more exclusive, more luxurious, rarer.For Ford (with Android Car Stereo), platinum means all the luxury amenities without the show-off stigma that comes with luxury.

Platinum means a $55,000 Ford Explorer loaded with all the creature comforts and advanced safety features of a luxury car.

 

The refreshed Explorer wears Platinum much better than the F-150 pickup, which can top out at more than $60,000. Such an expensive pickup makes you hesitate to bust boulders or span a gap at the work site, let alone toss wheelbarrows or waste in the back, and load up the leather-lined cab with four guys who should've been sprayed off first with a fire hose.

America's best-selling midsize SUV is a family hauler first, a workhorse second. While it's true that after a typical suburban Saturday most kids could use a fire hose, too, the family unit can look alternatively polished at the religious service or family function stepping out of the posh Platinum Explorer.

The base-model Explorer starts at just over $30,000.

Built in the Chicago assembly plant in the far South Side neighborhood of Hegewisch, the refreshed Explorer used by Chicago police gets a higher, bolder fascia that leans more to the truck side than the crossover side, though still with the Land Rover-styled honeycombed grille. Narrow rectangular headlights, framed with LEDs and underscored by LED fog lamps, give it a more muscular, square-jaw kind of face.

A couple of fuel-saving but hidden features, such as active grille shutters and rain runoff channels on the roof, improve aerodynamics, which should help compensate for the larger EcoBoost engine from the outgoing model. A necessary corrective, Ford ditches the underpowered 2.0-liter EcoBoost 4-cylinder for a 2.3-liter EcoBoost 4-cylinder that makes 280 horsepower and 310 pound-feed of torque, a boost of 40 hp and 40 pound-feet over the 2.0-liter engine. The standard engine is a plain 3.5-liter V-6 (290 horsepower and 255 pound-feet of torque).

The $55,000 test model is the shining example of how mainstream automakers are cutting into luxury territory, same as the entry-level models of luxury makes are cutting into the mainstream slice. We want it all, and every automaker wants to give it to us.

Building off the sport trim, the Platinum comes with a direct injection 3.5-liter twin turbocharged V-6 EcoBoost engine mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission, also offered in the F-150. The powerplant with four-wheel drive generates 365 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque, providing plenty of available boost for aggressive lane changes even on an incline. It also should provide plenty of power for towing up to 5,000 pounds (class III). It is the same engine used in the Police Interceptor, so there shouldn't be any doubts about its performance abilities.

More remarkable is how smooth and quiet the 4,900-pound Explorer is while driving. It will lull passengers to sleep, and while the 22.8 mpg fuel economy we experienced on the highway isn't great, it's pretty good for a three-row car of this size.

This is an excellent family road trip vehicle, perhaps even more so than my beloved minivan.

The Platinum comes loaded with advanced safety features such as adaptive cruise control that will slow the car down when traffic slows down, and speed up when traffic picks up again. It's the single greatest feature for the family road trip since Car DVD, yet the driver doesn't need the family in the car to use it.

Other features include a 180-degree front camera, which lets the nose of the car peer around a perpendicular blind spot at intersections. It might seem unnecessary until you try out the self-parking feature, which for a car this size and with a sizable blind spot at night, is a lovely convenience, even for purists. It hugged the curb better than I did, though most of the spots it chose had more than 2 feet of space between parked cars.

Other safety features include lane assist, hill descent controls and four different terrain settings that will please outdoorsmen, as well as minivan drivers who have been stymied by steep, icy driveways. The terrain management system, in concert with the four-wheel drive system, shifts torque between axles depending on the conditions. It can be overridden to toggle on the fly, but it doesn't need to be.

It has power folding mirrors, sunroof and moonroof, heated second row seats and massaging front seats that knead the butt and the back with greater lumbar focus than Mercedes' massaging seats. If installing an Android Car Gps in your car, that would be great!