According to a Bloomberg columnist, one of the vehicles that spearheaded the SUV festivus of yore — the Ford Explorer — will lose its trucklike comportment in the coming years. Call it responding to market pressure — a 25% sales drop will do that — or simply progress, but the next-generation Explorer will be on Ford/Volvo's D3/P2 platform, a car-based architecture underpinning the Volvo XC90 as well as the Volvo S60 and Ford Five Hundred. That move may cause the hunter-gatherers among us to recoil, as they find their ladder-frame machismo wagons less capable for weekend amusements. Still, they'll always have the Expedition. Oh, deer.
Ford About to Face Future With Toned-Down Explorer: Doron Levin [Bloomberg via MotorAuthority]
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Hydrogen Whosits: Ford to Show Fuel-Cell Explorer in Los Angeles [internal]