After a home and school loans, a vehicle is typically a family’s biggest expenditure so it makes sense to keep that purchase as nice as possible. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Explorer is a one-family truck that’s probably the nicest you could possibly find. Could that make it worth its premium price?
Did you ever read any of those Choose Your Own Adventure books when you were a kid? These were stories designed to let the reader choose one of a handful of different character paths the authors offered to wend one’s way through the storyline.
The builder of yesterday’s 1995 Volkswagen Cabrio did something similar, creating a modded car that was very much their own. Now, however, the intention was to make it someone else’s and that led to a $15,500 asking price for the car and all the work therein. That didn’t sit well with many of you who either didn’t appreciate the car or the work sufficiently enough to see the combination warranting such an outlay. In the end, that resulted in an 80 percent No Dice loss.
Today’s 1994 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer 4WD truck is just one year older than yesterday’s VW, and it looks to be in just as pristine of shape. The thing is, while Monday’s Cabrio was the work of a dedicated enthusiast to make a car that fits a specific vision, this Ford is seemingly all original and was the vision of a company seeking to sell that vision to the masses.
A child of the ’90s, the Explorer replaced the tippy canoe-like Bronco II as Ford’s smaller SUV. This was in the early days of the smaller SUV boom, something that the Explorer helped establish and then seemed to dominate for the next decade. Like the Taurus before it, the Explorer found an enormous success in its initial iteration that ensuing versions seemingly failed to capture.
This Eddie Bauer edition in Dark Cranberry Metallic over Mocha Frost accents is an excellent test subject to investigate what it was that Ford got so right that first time. The truck sports a one-owner history and a mere 53,307 miles on the clock. It’s also remarkably clean for its age, showing no appreciable wear anywhere, not even on its factory polished alloys. The Eddie Bauer edition was the top-of-the-line package and added the two-tone paint you see here, running boards, and a slew of power accessories in the cabin. This one adds leather upholstery (also in surprisingly good shape) and a pop-up and out moonroof.
For a drivetrain, the OG Explorer offers a four-liter edition of Ford’s long-serving Cologne V6. That OHV mill offers 155 horsepower and is backed up by an A4LD four-speed automatic and Ford’s push-button 4WD system.
The dealer selling the truck details its history and kit in the ad but doesn’t really go into detail as to its condition. Seeing the warmly rewarding vacuum tracks in the load area, however, we can assume that they did, in fact, detail the truck. Seeing as the dealer is playing up its condition, we’ll have to assume that everything important works as it should. The biggest challenge here for repair and maintenance might be the A/C system as I believe it should likely still be R12 in this year. Other than that, your local Ford dealer should welcome the truck with open service bays. A clear title keeps the registration shenanigans to a minimum.
Ford built a metric shit-load of Explorers during this model’s early heyday. That means there has long been a lot of them on the used car market from which to choose. These days that’s getting less the case, but still, there seems to be enough to go around and that means that prices tend to be pennies a pound for these early trucks. In fact, they’re so ubiquitous that I think in some areas you can get one for free at a roadside fruit stand just for buying an extra basket of strawberries. You never take them up on it because you know you’ll never eat all those strawberries before they go bad.
This one is not one of those ubiquitous ratty old Explorers. It’s probably the nicest one in existence outside what’s in of Greenville, Michigan’s Henry Ford Museum. Hell, why Ford hasn’t snapped this truck up yet is beyond me. Maybe it’s too busy fixing all the Bronco roofs to make the effort?
If you want to make the effort, and one-up the Ford Motor Company in having what’s possibly the best 1994 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition on the road, then you’ll need to cough up $21,900, since that’s what the dealer is asking.
That dealer feels so confident in that price that it has gone so far as to list the truck on Hemmings, which is a ballsy move. What do you think, was the price and the classified venue the right move? Or, is no 1994 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition ever going to be worth $21,900?
You decide!
Hemmings Classifieds out of Charlotte, North Carolina, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to The955CayenneWillBeAFutureClassic for the hookup!
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