Newly introduced SUVs expand to all niches at New York show
NEW YORK, N.Y. — If driving is in your family’s future, you take a flyer on an Aviator. Or a Pilot. Or you could settle for a Navigator. If you’d rather be more down to earth in your Quest for adventure, keep your Ion a Cadillac Cien, or your Vision could go from here to Infiniti as an Outlander making an Expedition toward Discovery of the Elements, and you could be an Ascender to look for Ions. If you had a Scion, would he want an Ion? Or maybe not.
If retro is your favorite thing, it won’t be long until you can select a Mustang Mach 1, or, if you’re Holden on, a Pontiac GTO, or a Nissan Z-Car, or a Mazda RX-8, to say nothing of the Thunderbird, or the PT Cruiser — the king of retro — which will be coming in a turbocharged alternative, just to keep up.
For those wondering where we’re headed in regard to the cars we’ll be driving in the near future, the New York International Auto Show might provide the most comprehensive glimpse.
New York is through being the last “big” U.S. auto show, and letting Detroit, Los Angeles and Chicago have all the glory. No question, Detroit is the industry king of U.S. auto shows, L.A. is the glitter capital, and Chicago has become the biggest spectator show, but New York is the media center of the universe, and to increase the unmistakable impact of the New York show, various manufacturers have held off the introductions of their newest vehicles just to introduce them at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan.
After two days of roaming through the press-conference-every-half-hour pace of the press days at New York, several things are very clear. We have not yet seen the end of the sport-utility vehicle craze, in fact, it will be enhanced by all the new vehicles that were in New York.
The new Lincoln Aviator was unwrapped at a pre-show gala by Ford Motor Company. At first glance, it appears to be a Lincoln version of the Mercury Mountaineer with a Navigator-style grille, and while that may partially be valid, Lincoln brought out an all-new Navigator for New York, as well.
With the Navigator already in the stable, Lincoln may have wanted to name its new SUV the Pilot, but that name has been taken by Honda, which brought out two all-new SUVs — the Pilot and the Element. The Pilot looks like a CR-V that has gotten a dose of steroids, expanding it up to about the size of the Ford Explorer, which Honda says is a prime target. The Element is smaller, but taller, with ultimate versatility, as Honda joins the ever-expanding list of companies trying to capture the youthful sporty market — underscoring the “Sport” in sport-utility vehicle.
It is apparent that merely keeping up with all the new SUVs is a daunting task. Here are just some, which push the number of combining available and soon-to-be-available SUVs to somewhere around 70. Land Rover has a new Discovery; Chrysler has a new Pacifica introduced as the first 2004; Nissan has a Murano; Volvo is coming with an XC90; Toyota is looking very square with BBX as the flagship of its new “Scion” youth-oriented division; Mitsubishi has completely redone the Montero, and adds to the menagerie with an all new Outlander; Ford has upgraded the Expedition and added an Everest version; BMW has had such success with its X5 it is going to add a smaller X3 from its Spartanburg, S.C., plant; Mercedes is calling its Vision a Grand Sports Tourer (GST) instead of SUV; Nissan has a concept version of its Quest minivan and new SUVs for both Nissan and Infiniti; Isuzu is coming out with an Ascender; Kia has a new SUV too, and Acura has an RDX concept on display.
Those are just the SUVs, and they prove that while New York show goers get to see all the trick stuff from Detroit, L.A. and Chicago, they also get a healthy dose of new stuff.
Moving to sports cars, everybody seems also to be trying to come out with new sporty coupes, if not all-out sports cars. Cadillac’s all0out sports car is the Cien, and it is a beautifully done, wedgy car that is low to the ground and looks more like the Cadillac LeMans racer than the actual race car, from some angles.
That’s what prompted Ford to declare it will build a version of the old GT-40 road-racing car that won LeMans back in the 1960s, and it also is rekindling the old Mustang Mach 1 name with another specialty vehicle.
General Motors will do a similar routine, with a throwback to the old GTO nickname for the ’60s musclecar of the Pontiac line. This one will be a revised and rebadged version of a hot performer from Holden, which is GM’s Australian division. The Munaro coupe has a 5.7-liter V8 and a six-speed manual transmission. It should arrive as a show car in time for next year’s auto show circuit, and be available by summer of 2003.
Hitting other highlights of the show, and of dealerships in the not too distant future, the big news of the Saturn Ion is more PR fluff than hot news. Saturn began life with a neat compact sedan and coupe. It expanded by adding the L midsize sedan, and just recently hit the streets with the VUE, a progressive, polymer-bodied SUV. So now, the folks at Saturn apparently realized they didn’t really have a name for the original car, beyond “Saturn,” so they came up with the new name — Ion. It’s neat, and it’s a progressive looking sedan in redesign, while the coupe has the unique Saturn reverse-opening doors, with a small, rear-hinged door for easier access to the rear.
The Mazda RX-8 has that same feature, and even a new and impressive Mercedes Vision concept wagon has that style door openings. Mercedes also introduced a stunning new SL55 coupe/roadster that it let affiliate AMG convert into the fastest Mercedes street vehicle ever, with a supercharged 5.5-liter V8 turning out 493 horsepower, and tossing the SL55 from 0-60 in 4.5 seconds.
Chrysler, indeed, put a turbocharger on a new version of the PT Cruiser, jacking up the 2.4-liter 4-cylinder with 12.9 inches of boost to 215 horsepower and 245 foot-pounds of torque. The Turbo Cruiser gets beefed up suspension and steering as well. Chrysler’s other big news was the Pacifica, which is a large station wagon that fits somewhere between a station wagon and an SUV, although Chrysler went to enormous pains to convince the world that it was a segment buster, defying definition by either of those terms.
Toyota might have made the most out of the least at the show. With a lot of new stuff out in the last two years, such as the Celica and the Matrix, and a couple more SUVs, Toyota didn’t really have anything new. So it went to the smoke and mirrors bit, with one executive even having the audacity to imply that only Toyota realizes there is a huge new population boom just reaching driving age, and only Toyota is preparing to attract that group with an all-new division called Scion.
Scion will work with selected Toyota dealers to market new, youthful vehicles. As such, Toyota showed off the new BBX, which is a square little mini-wagon currently on sale in Japan. Toyota also introduced a flashy CCX concept sports coupe as the other Scion vehicle, but executives were very careful to say that when Scion starts business, it will get a version of the BBX, and “may get something similar” to the CCX.
So while SUVs continue to grow and fill every size from mini to compact to intermediate to midsize to full size and to enormous, with sport and luxury versions filling in between, sports cars and sporty sedans, along with compact fun-cars can fill all the booths at a place like the New York Auto Show. And soon they’ll fill dealerships, and make the choice of your next vehicle a lot more perplexing, perhaps, but definitely a lot more fun.
[[[[[cutlines:
1/ Lincoln introduced a new Aviator SUV along with a thoroughly revised Navigator at the New York International Auto Show
2/ Cadillac continues to speed into the future with the Cien coupe, a flashy race-car-like vehicle that might challenge Corvette for GM supremacy. ]]]]]]
Kia builds a hot, new contender in the impressive minivan sector
There were a lot of years, over the past two decades, when the United States automotive customers desperately needed a new and different minivan. I’m not sure that this is exactly the best time for that, but we don’t always get to choose the best time.
In all those years when the only really popular and successful minivans were made by Chrysler Corporation, other manufacturers couldn’t seem to dent the Caravan/Voyager tandem. But in the last few years, Ford and General Motors have improved their contenders in that category, and Nissan, Toyota and finally Honda have come out with exceptional minivans, while Chrysler has also improved its gold standard in the field.
So right now, while a lot of minivan customers are going off in search of sport-utility vehicles, along comes Kia with the Sedona. Yes, Kia, a South Korean manufacturer, is shaking off the close-but-not-quite image of Korean auto-builders and sending off some very competent vehicles to the U.S. market. The Sedona might be the best example.
If there were no such thing as a minivan, and you were going to design one from the tires up, consider what you would want to include:
Compact size, maybe between the Caravan and the Grand Caravan, so let’s say 194.1 inches, with a wheelbase of 114.6, just over an inch longer than Caravan’s.
Good power but don’t overlook gas mileage, so we can go with a V6, but let’s make it a big one, at about 3.5 liters, and jazz it up, say, with dual-overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder. Because a lot of driving has to be done in the snow-belt, and because it has advantages in a long, flat floor as well as improved traction, we’ll put front-wheel-drive in the thing. That could put out 195 horsepower, and still could achieve 20 miles per gallon.
Innovative transmission, because a three-speed is no longer good enough, and a four-speed isn’t quite right, either. So let’s put in a five-speed automatic, even though no other current minivan has such a thing.
Three rows of seats inside, preferably two rows of buckets that fold down and flip out of the way, with a rear bench seat that also folds down. For convenience, the four buckets all recline, so let’s have the rear bench recline, too, and all of them can slide fore and aft as well as being removed. The front buckets, incidentally, should have eight-way power with a lumbar support, and 4-way power for the passenger seat.
Maximum access, so we want a good, high-lifting tailgate, and we also want side sliding doors, but definitely two of them, one on each side.
Safety is more and more important, so we want to make the Sedona solid, with a steel, unibody platform, large (10.87-inch) front discs, and make antilock an option. MacPherson struts are tried and true for suspension, so we’ll put that up front, with coil springs all around, and stabilizer bars both front and rear for handling. So while it will go, handle and stop, it also is strong enough to get a five-star rating in crash-testing by the U.S. government.
Price is also a major factor, so let’s make it inexpensive — a base price of under $20,000 and a top-line, loaded model for under $24,000. And, prices being what they are these days in the industry, the warranty matters, so give it the best you’ve ever heard of — 10-years, or 100,000 miles, just to prove you believe in its durability.
We want goodies, too. Plastic wood is OK, if you insist, but let’s make sure there are dual heat-air vents, front and rear, and a great stereo system, plus cupholders and cubbyholes — lots of them. Throw in not one, but two glove compartments, one right above the other; an extra storage drawer under the front passenger seat, and a center-dash pull-out cupholder and storage bin, plus a neat little goodie tray with a pop-up cover up on top of the dash, where it’s usually just wasted space.
Believe it or not, Kia set out to accomplish those tasks, and made it. The Sedona I drove was surprisingly quick, the benefit of the big V6 and the dual-overhead-cam power. The 5-speed transmission also puts you in the right gear without as much overlap, working or hunting. And the comfort and convenience also is surprisingly good.
Standard equipment on both the LX and EX includes three power plug-ins, front, rear and in the rear storage area, plus power windows, mirrors, door locks, dual air-conditioning, and map lights in the overhead console, plus reading lights in the second and third rows of seats, courtesy lights in the doors, which are a nice touch, and a light in the rear cargo area, but with an on-off switch, so you don’t have to leave the light on. Cruise control, full instruments including a tachometer, electric rear defroster, tilt steering column, and variable wipers front and rear.
I test-drove an EX model, which is the upgrade from the basic LX. When you move up to the EX, you get an upgraded audio system with a CD player on top of the AM-FM-cassette unit, and a couple of added speakers.
The EX also has standard roof rack and front foglights, and privacy side glass.
On the option list, the test vehicle had antilock brakes for $595, leather covering on the seats for $850, a power tilt and opening sunroof for $575, and two-tone paint for $195.
That ran the sticker price from $20,995 for the EX up to a total of $23,805 including destination.
That is a tremendous bargain, especially these days. And when you figure you could eliminate some of those options, or back off to the LX model, and be UNDER $20,000, and still get the same engine, transmission, suspension and warranty, we’re talking a major bargain.
I called Kia of Duluth, where the Sedona can be obtained for 0-percent interest on a 36-month loan, but I couldn’t get through to the sales manager, because he was too busy. That may be a good sign. A salesman told me the new Sedona, which just hit the marketplace a couple of months ago, is selling well, fitting in with the Spectra sedan and the Sportage compact SUV. I explained I was writing a column and has test-driven a Sedona, and was very impressed, which was just enough ammunition for the car-salesman.
“So,” he said, “ya wanna buy one, or what?”
Satellite radio should make Cadillac DeVille perfectly receptive
How much would you pay for the all-time trick car radio?
We know people who have paid $5,000 or even $10,000 to install a high-output, neighborhood-shaking audio system that is guaranteed to offend everyone outside their vehicle but who are subjected to the sidewalk tremors from 500 watts of bass. And we can think of dozens of high-tech shops where you can go to have such systems installed, as well as several attorneys who can defend you in disturbing-the-peace litigation.
But I’m not talking about that kind of high-tech audio. I’m talking just about the most futuristic radio system you’ve ever imagined. Think about it. You’re going for a drive, say from Minnesota to Chicago, or to Colorado, or anywhere outside your preferred preset radio-station range. Don’t you hate it when your favorite music station, or public radio station, or morning sports talk-radio show fades to static, and then away altogether?
Of course you do. Then you’re in a faraway city and you spend two or three days scanning and searching to see if you can find a compatible station.
So, how much would you pay to get a radio that would take care of all that?
Would you pay $55,000?
Probably not. But maybe, if you could afford it, you would spend $55,000 for just such a radio system if you could get it wrapped inside a high-tech, contemporary luxury sedan.
I must say, when a 2002 Cadillac DeVille DTS showed up as a test-drive vehicle, I was planning on test-driving the car, not necessarily the audio system. Of course, every car I drive gets its audio system tried out thoroughly and evaluated. You might recall that last weekend I test-drove a new BMW 745, and made particular note of the fact that it took me about four days to figure out how to turn on and tune the radio.
The DeVille DTS has a new XM Satellite radio, with 100 channels of coast-to-coast digital sound available. Using it is easy, but trying to decide what to listen to is more challenging, when you have cleaer access to 100 unique stations.
First of all, the audio system was impressive, with a Bose AM-FM-cassette and CD player, and eight speakers distributing the rich, full tones from the Bose. That is standard equipment on the DTS.
But a $295 option is the XM Satellite radio. You turn it on, and you can program in the local stations if you want. But we took the car on a trip from Duluth to Hibbing, and back. Driving from Hibbing to Duluth, we experimented. There were various specialty music stations, and sports stations, and there were a whole bunch of television-oriented programs, such as the CNN station, and the Discovery station.
Because we were coming back at around midnight, I was tired. Not so tired as to yield the driving duties, because I have strong feelings against driving when you’re too tired. But I was tired from a long day, and I knew I’d be better off if we could find some sort of stimulating stuff on the radio.
We found a comedy network, one of several available. We drove back laughing pretty steadily at various comedians, from nameless new ones who were funny, to risque ones who were still funny, to old reliables, such as Bob Newhart.
I realized that I have strong feelings about driving while listening to the radio, but I’d have to alter my theory. I think listening to a ball game, or a good hockey game, is a great way to go on a trip, because you follow it, even casually, and you find that two or three hours have flashed by while you were paying attention to the radio broadcast.
Good music also works, and I prefer stuff with good words, maybe thought-provoking. I also think that hard rock music, with a constant, throbbing beat, can fatigue you more then inspire you, even if it’s hard rock that you greatly enjoy.
But the humor station was a new favorite. You can get tapes or discs of various comedians, but they get very old, very quickly. To listen to new and different and spontaneous choices of comedians on a station that never fades or threatens to turn to static, the hour and a half flew by, and soon we were cruising over the hill and into Duluth.
What’s going on is a lot of music and other entertainment is being beamed up to satellites, and the newest radios with this XM Satellite system can pick up the relayed signals, so you get constant, clear sound all the time.
At $295, the radio is a bargain. And you can find satellite radios now in aftermarket shops. But in the DeVille DTS sedan, the sticker is $55,140.
However, you have to concede that there’s a lot of car available at that price. A 4.6-liter, dual overhead cam V8, and a 4-speed automatic gets the power down swiftly. Firm suspension with quick, agile steering and a Stabilitrak chassis system and all-speed traction control enhances the feeling of command.
Added performance features include 17-inch aluminum wheels, antilock 4-wheel disc brakes, rain-sensing wipers, a power massaging lumbar support, airbags all around you, 10-way power adjusting seats, and heated seats both front and rear, put the DeVille up there against the most luxurious competitors.
Zebrano wood trim and leather seats further distinguish the DTS, and an electronic compass in the mirror is a nice touch.
Beyond that standard equipment, which includes the 300-horsepower 4.6-liter V8 engine, DTS options beyond the XM Satellite radio include rear airbags, chrome wheels, an express-open sunroof, and three special items — OnStar, Night Vision, and Ultrasonic rear parking assist.
OnStar is unexcelled as a navigation system, because it puts you in voice contact with folks manning global positioning system computers that can tell you precisely where you are and advise you of where you want to go.
The Ultrasonic rear parking assist is something I first tested on a BMW 7-Series sedan about 10 years ago, but it is an exceptional item. There are little sensors imbedded in your rear bumper, and as you back up, when you get closer and closer to an object, you hear a beep, which then becomes beep-beep-beep, in closer and closer order as you get closer to the object. Very helpful for parking, or for pulling up to your garage door and being unaware of an item you might have left in the driveway.
As for the Night Vision, that started out as a unique Cadillac item. It consists of an infrared camera lens located in the circular emblem in the middle of the grille. It shoots out ahead of you — way ahead of where your headlights can reach — and detects anything that might emit warmth, such as a pedestrian, or a deer, or an engine or transmission of a car. The image is relayed, like a negative, light on dark through a screen that can be positioned on your windshield. You can heighten the contrast and brightness, and the location, including moving it off the windshield or up right near your normal line of vision.
If the Cadillac DeVille DTS was not a good car, the gimmicks and gadgets would make it an interesting choice for a buyer who could afford it. But the DTS is an outstanding car. I like its new design, which came out a year ago. It has a sleek look to it that actually makes the Eldorado and Seville look a bit dated — especially with the new CTS model out looking so futuristic. The DeVille DTS is a front-wheel-drive luxury sedan, with enormous room, that goes swiftly, handles with great precision, and now, with items like Night Vision, OnStar and the XM Satellite radio system, it goes to the head of the class in usable gadgets.
Acura RSX reinforces Honda commitment to sporty performers
Honda has clearly established itself as one of the world’s most successful and most technically advanced automobile manufacturers over the last three decades, and one of the thing that always has set Honda apart from most of its competitors is that for all its flexible, durable, economical and utilitarian vehicles, it always has had a corporate gleam in its eye — for fun.
The Civics, Accords, and upscale luxury Acuras always have been solid, long-lasting, comparatively inexpensive and economical to operate. But for every one of those, there is the Prelude, the NSX, or a hot-rod version of the Civic that does all those more mundane things, but also has a sporty feel that might cost twice as much money from other manufacturers or from after-market street-racing types.
One of my favorite vehicles, over the years, was the Acura Integra. When Honda went upscale with an entirely separate dealer branch named Acura, much like Toyota went to Lexus and Nissan went to Infiniti, it had a luxury car and a mid-range near-luxury car, and it also had an entry-level luxury car called the Integra. The terms “entry-level” and “luxury” might be mutually exclusive, but the Integra was a $18,000-$20,000 vehicle, either coupe or 4-door sedan, and while it felt tighter and upgraded, it also was compact and sprightly, aimed at sportier drivers.
Our family owned a 1989 Integra 4-door hatchback for several years, and it was flawless in operation and never needed maintenance. The Integra changed, to a slightly larger, more bulbous model for 1990 and onward. Then, in the mix of model changeovers, Honda decided to discontinue the Integra. Many people were surprised; I was shocked. Honda also dropped the Prelude, which was a rolling test-bed of high-tech stuff.
But, just when we might have thought the company was abandoning a significant and loyal segment of its customer base, Honda has recovered for 2002. It has brought out the new Acura RSX, which is a flashy little 2-door coupe, intended to fill the void left by both the Integra and Prelude.
I got a chance to test-drive an RSX a while ago, and it was more than merely satisfying. I voted for it as the No. 2 car behind only the Audi A4 on my personal car of the year ballot. Car and Driver magazine named it as one of its top 10 automobiles in the world in this, its first year on the market.
The RSX is great looking, sleek and wedgy, but with a refinement that leaves you certain this is no 2-door Accord, nor is it a chopped-down sedan of any kind. It will come only as a 2-door coupe, but there is a surprisingly spacious rear seat back under that sloping roofline.
The test car was the Type-S model, which takes the basic RSX’s 160 horsepower engine and jacks it to 200 horsepower, thanks to some extensive valving and electronic chip work on the controls of the variable-valve-timing 2.0-liter 4-cylinder. In steps of technology, Honda went from a single overhead cam to dual overhead cams, from two or three valves per cylinder to four valves per cylinder. Then, when it went to a cam-timing control device that can promote or restrict the timing of the valve opening and closing, then engine virtually gets retuned to accommodate whatever gas you’re putting in. The old Integra went from 1.6 liters to 1.8 and then to 2.0, but none had the power of this beast.
The Type-S also has flashy alloy wheels , built-in foglights in a slanty figure-8 shape headlight arrangement, and a tall, angular rear end, with a hatchback and well-designed taillights, plus one of those trendy new large tailpipes.
As slick as the car is, from its low-sloping hood back, it is every bit as neat inside. Silvery finishes on the shift knob, accenting the instruments give the image of high-tech, and when you turn the key, you know it is. The tachometer goes to an 8,000 RPM redline, and the silvery shift knob controls a 6-speed manual transmission.
The clutch work is smooth and precise, and the steering wheel is properly thick and has thumb controls for remote cruise.
A Bose audio system is fantastic, and the audio system is located in the middle of the center dash panel. The heat-air controls are above the audio, which can be a problem, but the ergonomics of this set-up is simple, with round knobs giving you more heat, more fan force, etc., at an easy touch.
The gauges are contoured, with darkened lights illuminating through the tiny cutout slots of the numbers.
The seats are firm and supportive, and they keep you in place when you drive the car — right up to the 8,000 redline, and maybe hard around a tight turn in the process. The suspension is resilient but firm, and the brakes do a great job of pulling the car down in a flash.
On top of all the goodies, the car will get 24-27 miles per gallon, city and highway, and the sixth gear is excellent because it gives you a freeway cruising gear that lets the engine purr along where a 5-speed might be whining a bit more as you require more and more of those unlimited revs to hold speed.
The RSX will be rare enough to have continued appeal as years pass, and it will look like a hot coupe for as long as it exists.
2003 Expedition feels comfortably at home on road or mountain
When Ford introduced the Expedition as a 1997 model, it did it by summoning the world’s automotive media to Alaska, which was pretty near perfect as a place to experience off-road capabilities.
We were able to drive the Expedition around fjords, adjacent to glaciers, on and off all manner of highways — just about anywhere. The years have whizzed by, and it is time for Ford to introduce an all-new Expedition as a 2003 model, so Ford summoned the journalists to British Columbia, where we could take the new beast into the Canadian Rockies and try them on rugged mountainside terrain, and through the ice and snow on top of a mountain.
Talk about hitting the high spots!
While the new Expedition carries over many of the identifying cues of the first one, it is far different in a variety of new and improved ways. First, it looks sleeker, with an angled grill that tapers down and continues below the bumper.
There aren’t many ways to make a large, boxy vehicle look sleek from the side, so Ford did something better by making it feel sleeker and more stable. In the process, the new all of that vast Expedition interior room is more usable, and in a wide variety of ways.
Key ingredients in the redesign include an all new chassis, following the impressive lead made on the new-for-2002 Explorer. Off-road or all-wheel-drive vehicles require more rear suspension travel, because on a large bump or change in terrain, the vehicle might buck and the shocks must stretch to accommodate. Previously, the side frame rails of the chassis have had to rise up high, up and over the rear axle to assure leaving adequate room for suspension travel.
In the new Expedition (as in the new Explorer), Ford has engineered a patented new method of cutting a hole in the frame rail, which is a large, girder-like bar of protective iron. Then a sleeve is placed through the hole, and the axle shaft runs through the sleeve. As if by magic, the ground clearance can stay the same or even improve, while the floor can be lowered several inches. On the Expedition, the opening is a vertical oval, more than a circle, increasing the travel even more.
Ford claims the new Expedition chassis, which is an inch and a half wider, is also 70 percent stiffer than the previous one. That aids stability, allows for installation of independent rear suspension — a first on such a large SUV — and it also enhances flexibility of the interior room. Ford makes use of that room by offering a variety of seat arrangements.
The front buckets are backed by two more rows of seats, either mid-row buckets or bench, and a rear bench, so you can choose to seat seven or eight. In fact, you can even get a front bench if you’re determined to carry nine occupants, I guess.
The key is that you can fold down the second and third rows of seats, and not just down, but out — out of sight and out of the way. The second row, which can slide fore and aft by 11 inches for easier access to the rear, is 40-20-40 by percentage, and the third row 60-40. The front seat, if you chose the bench, would be 40-60. Everything folds every which way, and you could even haul large things of great size. Or, with a sleeping bag, you could take a nap back there.
On our introductory test, obviously, we were more consumed with how the Expedition goes than how it rests or hauls, although the cargo area ranges from 20 inches behind the rear seat to 52.6 inches if you have the rear seat folded down, and to 87.2 inches if you fold down both the second and third rows. In total volume, that equates to 20.6, 60.9 or 110.5 cubic feet.
The overall length of the Expedition is 205.8 inches, and the curb weight is anywhere from 5,271 pounds to 5,689 pounds, depending on whether you get the 2-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive versions.
Big as it is, aimed at taking on Chevrolet’s Suburban, the Expedition handles amazingly well. Not only is the whole platform more stable, but the suspension has been redone, using more aluminum, and the steering is now rack and pinion, making it far more precise, and providing far less unsprung weight to deal with.
A lot of modern technology has gone into the Expedition, too. Bigger wheels — 17 inch — get their traction delivered by ControlTrac, which is Ford’s electronic sensing system to distribute 100 percent of all available torque either front or rear is it detects slippage, and the optional AdvanceTrac, which is a system to electronically shift torque from side to side as well.
In tests we ran through, the Expedition would start and pull out of situations where three tires were on rollers and only one had any traction. Other vehicles on display would merely spin or sit helplessly, because their traction-control devices wouldn’t shift fully. If it only isolates front to rear, for example, then the spinning tire would cause the power to be diminished to both, leaving you at a standstill.
The stress on the Expedition also has been to eliminate noise, and great care has been done to pack foam into all joints where vibrations might be transmitted.
Another upgrade from previous models is under the hood. The standard 4.6-liter V8 is now made with an all-aluminum block, while the optional 5.4-liter V8 has been refined to be quieter and more powerful. The 4.6 has 232 horsepower and 291 foot-pounds of torque, and the 5.4 has 260 horses and 350 foot-pounds of torque. That gives you a tow rating of 8,900 pounds.
Such numbers are impressive, but not as important as how the whole package feels, and the Expedition feels strong in every phase, whether cruising down — or up — a twisting mountain highway, or cavorting off-road. We went up and down some mountain sides, and were directed to thrash through a deep, seemingly bottomless mud puddle, and go up and down cliffs that were so steep you couldn’t see over the snout.
That is my only complaint with the Expedition. Designers raised the hood something like 3 inches to satisfy those drivers who whined that they couldn’t see the outer corners of the fenders when parking. I would rather loose the 3 inches and gain whatever visibility of the roadway ahead — or the off-roadway — would be regained by the sloping hood.
Ergonomics are good, even when you’re at a really strange angle on the steepest part of a mountain course. And while nobody tested the safety stuff by rolling down a cliff, the stronger platform, much bigger brakes, and a Safety Canopy side air curtain augmenting the other airbags, gives the Expedition a double five-star rating in the government’s crash testing.
We drove from the mountain city of Kamloops to the resort town of Whistler, and the next morning we rode snowmobiles to the top of Caribou Mountain for the final test. I was eagerly anticipating the chance to really test how the Expedition would work on snow and ice, but it was too warm. The snowmobile ride was fun, alongside mountain streams and cliffs, and we got ‘way up high, but spring rains had already arrived overnight instead of high country snow, and we were reduced to sloshing through slush more than good-old Northland ice and snow.
Still, the Expedition handled it all smoothly, and, once back on the highway, it sailed back to Vancouver smoothly. While the vast majority of buyers who are going to spend about $40,000 for the all-wheel-drive versions of the Expedition may never go off the road, the new Expedition will handle all highway chores much more smoothly, and it’s not bad to also realize that if you did want to venture way off the road, or up a mountain, it’ll handle that, too.
[[[cutlines:
1/ A row of 2003 Expeditions rested while halfway up the mountains for some energetic off-road tests at their British Columbia introduction.
2/ A new Expedition virtually disappeared while being plunged through a muddy puddle on the side of mountain near Whistler, British Columbia. ]]]
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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