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Navigator charts course to further luxury-SUV edge in 2003
Even if you hadn’t noticed the subtle styling differences on the outside of the 2003 Lincoln Navigator, you realize as soon as you climb aboard that this is something beyond being a rebadged Ford Expedition.
Not that there is any problem with the Expedition, or with the first Navigator, which began life in 1997. When Ford went after the large SUV market, it moved logically. It took the platform of the F150 full-size pickup truck — the largest-selling single vehicle on the planet — and plunked the Expedition body on top. Then it modified that exterior and gave a version to the upscale Lincoln brand.
That first Navigator did just fine, thank you. With its bold “waterfall” grille, the first Navigator popularized the “luxury” sport-utility vehicle segment, and it went on to capture 40 percent of that lucrative market by the end of 2001. With prices zooming up over $40,000, $50,000 and $60,000, and profit margins of $15,000-$20,000 per unit, it is easy to see why the competition has risen dramatically in the last four years.
For 2002, the Cadillac Escalade, for example, made a serious bid as the top U.S. luxury truck, based on the long-stellar Chevrolet Suburban/Tahoe. Ford, however, has been planning its new-for-2003 Expedition and Navigator for years, and when it introduced the new Expedition in the mountains of British Columbia, it seemed possibly redundant to call the motoring press to reconvence in Santa Barbara, Calif., to check out the new Navigator. But the new Navigator was worth the trip.
While the first Expedition and Navigator were based on the F150, the new Expedition and Navigator are unique cousins. When the new F150 is introduced a year from now, it will have nothing in common with the big SUVs. As it is, the Navigator has a surprising number of structural differences from the Expedition, and Michael Arbaugh, who is chief designer atop the separate engineering staffs for both vehicles, also stressed that the new Navigator has nothing in common with the current Navigator.
“The current Navigator is a dressed-up Expedition, and the current Expedition is a dressed-up F150,” said Arbaugh. “The new ones share front door panels, roof, B, C and D pillars, and quarter-panels. The Navigator has different grille, bumpers, headlights, hood, fenders, liftgate, taillights, and exterior sheet metal from the Expedition. Even the door glass is different — thicker on the Navigator.”
The interiors are significantly different, too, right down to the instruments which have white LED lighting in the symmetric round Navigator gauges and green-tinted in the Expedition. Luxury touches like the burl walnut and leather of the Navigator also set it apart, as well as the console-mounted shift lever. The Expedition interior is just fine, but the Navigator is truly luxurious, but with classy, almost German-car simplicity rather than overstuffed plushness.
All that luxury is not without cost. The basic Navigator 4×2 starts at $48,000, while the 4×4 in fully-loaded form can rise above $61,000.
The Navigator comes only with the upgraded 5.4-liter V8, while the Expedition has a 4.6-liter V8 or the 5.4. Arch-rival GM stays with aging but highly-developed pushrod V8 engines, choosing enlarged displacement to add power, while Ford has vaulted into the future with more flexible overhead-camshaft engine designs. The Navigator 5.4 is a dual-overhead-camshaft, 4-valve-per-cylinder unit with 300 horsepower at a high 5,000 RPMs, and a whopping 355 foot-pounds of torque at a low 2,750 RPMs. Beyond that, 90 percent of Navigator’s low-end pulling power is exemplified by the fact that 90 percent of that torque peak is available all the way from 1,700-4,700 revs.
It needs all the power, because the Navigator weighs nearly 6,000 pounds (5,994 in 4×4 dress). While seven or even eight occupants can ride inside, the 4-wheel-drive Navigator will tow 8,300 pounds. The ControlTrac transfer case lets you pick all-wheel-drive, 4×4 high, 4×4 low, or 4×2 high, with a 4-speed automatic transmission making the transitions. In normal use, the Navigator 4×4 should get 12 miles per gallon city, and 16 highway, and a 28-gallon tank should help limit fuel stops.
Despite all the impressive upgrades, perhaps the most significant is the Navigator’s suspension. Ford engineers came up with a unique and patented system for the rear suspension, which it first used on the 2002 Explorer, and makes an equally dramatic change in stance, stability and ride quality on the larger Navigator/Expedition platform. The trick is called “porthole” design, and it means that instead of the large side frame rail arching up and over the rear axle, Ford can run that large, 10-foot straight side-beam all the way back, with a hole cut into it. The rear axle shafts is run through the porthole, directly to the wheels.
That technique allows several things. First, the frame is stronger and therefore safer from side-impact and structurally less flexible. Second, it allows designers to lower the floor several inches while also increasing ground clearance to 8.6 inches — achievements that seem like two diametrically opposed objectives. The porthole design allows for and combines with independent rear suspension to pay obvious benefits in handling agility compared to solid-axle designs.
Wheel travel is increased to 9.5 inches because of the independent rear suspension and porthole design, which soaks up bumps and handles off-road chores. The frame is twice as stiff as its predecessor, and creates a flat floor for greater interior room while also lowering the unsprung weight — that proportion of the total weight that must be supported by springs and shock absorbers. When less weight is dependent upon the shocks and springs, they can be fine-tuned for ride quality, rather than simply being made firmer to support more weight.
Like the Expedition, Navigator switches from recirculating-ball to the more precise rack-and-pinion steering, and unlike the Expedition, Navigator adds 18-inch wheels (instead of 17), with the suspension tuned differently, and the addition of 4-wheel air-suspension components. The air-pressure adjusts automatically, not only to level the load but to raise the body one inch after you get started, and another inch if you switch to the “4-wheel low” off-road setting. It also means that when you stop, the body lowers an inch, reminiscent of a well-trained camel that kneels down to let you on or off.
Safety and noise-reduction also were priorities with the Ford engineering team. Hydroformed frame rails increase strength, with 70 percent improvement in torsional stiffness and 67 percent in stiffness against vertical bending aid both safety and reduce “NVH,” the noise-vibration-harshness trio that is the target of every manufacturer’s engineers. The fully-boxed Engine mounts coated with rubber help cancel the normal vibration frequency, and everything from the double-wishbone front suspension to the structural foam used at various joints and acoustic baffles and laminates insulating larger cavities, plus the thicker glass, are aimed at reducing sound and vibration.
Lincoln officials readily admit they examined other vehicles as targets for the new Navigator, and they claim that the 2002 Navigator was slightly noisier than the Cadillac Escalade and Lexus SC430 luxury SUVs, but that the 2003 Navigator is quieter than both, with a 42-decibel reading at idle. At 206 inches in length, the Navigator has a 118.8-inch wheelbase, and it stands 77.8 inches tall and 80.2 inches wide. That’s large.
Larger and stronger 4-wheel disc brakes have an added feature that pressurizes to increase stopping power when you step harder on the brakes make the big Navigator feel more managable too. The frame is aligned to better engage a smaller car in the event of an accident to bolster the Navigator’s safety intentions, and, along with the usual front airbags, Navigator deploys a side curtain Safety Canopy with dual-stage protection for occupants of the first and second row seats.
In its quest to raise the competitive bar, Navigator offers a choice of bucket or bench seats in the second row, with a much roomier third-row bench. The second and third row seats also fold flat into the lowered floor to turn the Navigator into a truly cavernous room, and the rear tailgate operates with a remote power switch, opening fully or closing in about 10 seconds.
Beyond the dual climate controls and thundering audio system, which sounds better than ever with the normal motoring sounds reduced, a couple of other touches prove conclusively that Lincoln went over the top. First, the leading edge of the hood has been raised 4 inches, in response to market research that showed some shorter drivers complained of difficulty keeping track of the snout in parking maneuvers. Never mind that the best move for a vehicle sometimes criticized for being too large might not be to make it larger.
And, would you believe power running boards? Yes, the running boards quietly slide out 4 inches when any door is opened, and they slide back in when the door is closed. Running boards used to be standard, and were a nice touch when stepping up or down to enter or exit from an old car. They are similarly useful in the new crop of ever-larger trucks and SUVs. The only drawback is that some people don’t exactly fit the height of running boards, and some find it easier to hop directly up and in or down and out. Whether you use running boards or not, in foul weather you will find a neat little horizontal strip of snow, slush, mud or simply wetness on the back of your pants-leg, about calf-height.
If you time the new Navigator right, you could pull up, feel the whole thing kneel down an inch, hop out, and have the power running board rubber-stamp its trademark on your calf.
What’ll they think of next?
Marauder is Mercury’s 2003 corner of Ford ‘toy department’
It’s about time Mercury got to play in Ford Motor Company’s “toy department.” The 2003 Mercury Marauder, which was introduced at the Chicago Auto Show barely three months ago, met with such a strong response that it is springing to life as a 2003 production model.
It is low, long, heavy and powerful, and it is the latest in a lengthening line of throwbacks to the muscle-car era, while also fulfilling some interesting holes in our country’s automotive history.
The all-black Marauder is big (211.9 inches long and 4,165 pounds hefty), but it’s low (56.8 inches high), and it has tremendous power (302 horsepower and 310 foot-pounds of torque) from a sophisticated and free-breathing 4.6-liter V8. It handles as well as it goes, and it stops surprisingly well on its big, 4-wheel disc brakes. It will cost you $34,495 to get your hands on one of 18,000 to be built for the 2003 model year, with availability starting this summer.
We think we’re pretty sophisticated, here in the U.S. of A., pretending to care about global warming (those of us who are not in denial), about roadway congestion (those of us in compact-or-smaller cars), about fuel economy (those of us whose cars get more than 25 miles per gallon), and about effective traction (those of us with front-wheel-drive cars). But realistically, the heart of American car-buyers has been a craving for high performance. Some buyers are old enough to have experienced it first-hand, in the 1960s and early ’70s, while others have either heard about it, read about it, or found and fixed up old cars from that era to relive it, marveling at the power — if not the glory — of those giant old beasts with their big, up-front V8 engines and rear-drive platforms.
It may have been hard to detect, under the large shadow of giant sport-utility vehicles and $35,000 pickup trucks, but high-performance cars have made a stirring comeback. While U.S. manufacturers’ lobbyists continue to convince the government to not tighten fuel-economy or emission laws, those manufacturers then can make more powerful engines and larger vehicles, which are worth more at profit-margin time and don’t require totally new research and development costs.
This being Memorial Day weekend, we can all watch the Indianapolis 500, and notice that almost all the cars are powered by a “Chevrolet” V8 with dual-overhead-camshafts and 4 valves per cylinder. Interestingly enough, that exact engine has been running for several years at Indy, as the Oldsmobile Aurora V8, because that’s who built it. But with Oldsmobile phasing out of production, Chevrolet simply plunked its bow-tie on that advanced V8, even though Chevrolet doesn’t make an overhead-cam V8 for production.
Ford Motor Company has been ahead of the curve on all that, transferring its main power units to overhead-camshaft engine designs with the modular 4.6-liter V8 a decade ago. That engine is a workhorse in cars and trucks, and can be enhanced to dual-overhead-cam, 4-valve-per-cylinder status for application in such stalwarts as the Mustang Cobra.
So when Ford decides to make a retro-type hot rod for the street, it starts out with some higher technology. So the Marauder could give a giant boost to Mercury, which has spent the last couple of decades being little more than a slightly upscale escort — you should pardon the expression — for various Ford products. The brand has even been phased out of operation in Canada, where the only Mercury vehicles you can buy you must now buy through Ford dealers.
Building the Marauder wasn’t all that much of a stretch. Mercury already had the Grand Marquis, its version of the Ford Crown Victoria, a large sedan that saw most of its service seeming to go to police departments as large cruisers. Mercury builds over 100,000 Grand Marquis sedans, and it has gotten the go-ahead to carve 18,000 annual Marauders out of that total.
The sedan is already being built, with a companion convertible still ranking as a concept vehicle. I was invited along with a number of midwest automotive journalists to gather in the Milwaukee area to the MGA Research Corporation proving grounds and crash-test site for a preliminary wringing out of the Marauder. Located just southwest of Burlington, Wis., the site was originally built by Nash-Kelvinator to be near its Kenosha, Wis., plant, and it now serves various functions for MGA, located within an hour of Milwaukee, Chicago and Madison.
We had a blast with the Marauders. The name was resurrected from the 1963 performance models of the same name, built on the large Montclair/Monterey models. Parnelli Jones won the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in a 1963 Marauder. After a year, it went away, to come back in 1969 and 1970, the absolute peak of high-performance cars.
The new one is impressive. Painted all black, with a blacked-out grille, the Marauder’s true beauty starts at ground level, with flashy 18-inch chromed wheels shod with new and specifically tested BF Goodrich g-force T/A high-performance tires. The car rides on all-new suspension on an enhanced frame, with strengthened hyrdroformed steel front rails for safety up front, a second cast-aluminum cross-member, which serves as the location for engine mount, suspension control arms and the “rack” part of the new steering rack-and-pinion, and a steel cross-member designed to resist torsion and bending while helping transfer side-impact crash forces across the frame structure to the opposite rail.
In real-world terms, all of that stiffens the frame’s torsional rigidity 24 percent, and its resistance to vertical bending by 20 percent. That helps limit the noise, vibration and harshness — the good-ol’ NVH that engineers fight with every vehicle. It also allows the chassis dynamics guys to play with the suspension parts to enhance precise handling, instead of using shocks and springs to counteract flexing before thinking about handling. Coil-over-shock springs and Tokico tunable monotube dampers bolster the independent front suspension, renewed with steel upper and aluminum lower control arms. A 28-mm stabilizer bar takes the stiffness to another step, still without ever feeling harsh.
In the rear, the live-axle suspension has load-leveling air springs to help maintain ride height even when the trunk is fully loaded, which means 21.6 cubic feet of cavernous space, and a 21-mm stabilizer bar further improves the firm stance in cornering. All of that, and the new rack-and-pinion steering, make the Marauder surprisingly nimble, even around the special slalom course the Ford folks had set up at the MGA facility. Yes, the body leaned a bit when you truly pushed it, but the steering and cornering ability remained precise.
While Ford has adapted the 4.6 engine in various ways, from the basic cast-iron, 2-valve, everyday engine to the hand-built, all-aluminum, DOHC Cobra version, the Marauder engine is a bit of a combination. It takes the 4.6 and makes it all aluminum, with the DOHC and 4-valve technology. A low-restriction air intake and aluminum upper and lower intake manifolds plunge premium fuel through dual-bore 57-mm fuel injectors.
The 302 horsepower peak at 5,750 RPMs, and the 310 torque peak is achieved at 4,250 RPMs. And those numbers were also utilized by the engineers, who borrowed from their drag-racing history to come up with a reinforced 11.25-inch high-stall-speed torque converter on the 4-speed automatic transmission. The high stall speed allows engine revs to build up before torque is sent to the rear wheels. When you hammer the throttle on takeoff, the automatic upshifts from first to second at 6,000 revs, and from second to third at 6,200 — just under the 6,250 redline. That’s fun, because most engines would shift at lower revs, maybe even below the power peaks, unless you could hand-shift them.
Steve Babcock, the project engineer on the Marauder, said great attention to detail also was paid to the wheels and tires, with the 235/50 front and 245/55 rears on those 10-spoke wheels. “We wanted all muscle-car parts, so we started off with the Goodrich Comp T/A HR4, but they didn’t have quite the right rear tire. They developed this ‘W’ rated tire, which means its good for 168 miles per hour, and it’s great for traction in the dry, and very good in rain, while also being a 40,000-mile tire. We also went after a KDWS — which stands for Key: Dry, Wet, Snow — and they came up with a design that we found was 98 percent as good in snow as our all-season tires.”
Such attention to detail is impressive, and it gives the Marauder its final stick-to-the-road ability to complement getting all that power down. When you’ve got to deal with snow, ice and hills for a good part of the year, a front-engine/rear-drive muscle car might seem a little out of your realm. But returning to the realm of muscle cars, with modern technology complementing a retro look, who can argue with the Marauder’s potential?
[[[[[cutlines:
1/ The Mercury Marauder looks even sleeker next to a roadside military tank museum near Milwaukee.
2/ The rear shows off the twin chromed exhaust tubes that finish off the high-powered new Marauder powertrain.
3/ Even when pushed around the cones of an autocross circuit, the Marauder remained stable and precise.
4/ White-faced instruments and a businesslike interior complement the no-nonsense, muscle-car image. ]]]]]]]
Marauder lets Mercury get into Ford’s ‘toy department’
It’s about time Mercury got to play in Ford Motor Company’s “toy department.” The 2003 Mercury Marauder, which was introduced at the Chicago Auto Show barely three months ago, met with such a strong response that it is springing to life as a 2003 production model.
It is low, long, heavy and powerful, and it is the latest in a lengthening line of throwbacks to the muscle-car era, while also fulfilling some interesting holes in our country’s automotive history.
The all-black Marauder is big (211.9 inches long and 4,165 pounds hefty), but it’s low (56.8 inches high), and it has tremendous power (302 horsepower and 310 foot-pounds of torque) from a sophisticated and free-breathing 4.6-liter V8. It handles as well as it goes, and it stops surprisingly well on its big, 4-wheel disc brakes. It will cost you $34,495 to get your hands on one of 18,000 to be built for the 2003 model year, with availability starting this summer.
We think we’re pretty sophisticated, here in the U.S. of A., pretending to care about global warming (those of us who are not in denial), about roadway congestion (those of us in compact-or-smaller cars), about fuel economy (those of us whose cars get more than 25 miles per gallon), and about effective traction (those of us with front-wheel-drive cars). But realistically, the heart of American car-buyers has been a craving for high performance. Some buyers are old enough to have experienced it first-hand, in the 1960s and early ’70s, while others have either heard about it, read about it, or found and fixed up old cars from that era to relive it, marveling at the power — if not the glory — of those giant old beasts with their big, up-front V8 engines and rear-drive platforms.
It may have been hard to detect, under the large shadow of giant sport-utility vehicles and $35,000 pickup trucks, but high-performance cars have made a stirring comeback. While U.S. manufacturers’ lobbyists continue to convince the government to not tighten fuel-economy or emission laws, those manufacturers then can make more powerful engines and larger vehicles, which are worth more at profit-margin time and don’t require totally new research and development costs.
This being Memorial Day weekend, we can all watch the Indianapolis 500, and notice that almost all the cars are powered by a “Chevrolet” V8 with dual-overhead-camshafts and 4 valves per cylinder. Interestingly enough, that exact engine has been running for several years at Indy, as the Oldsmobile Aurora V8, because that’s who built it. But with Oldsmobile phasing out of production, Chevrolet simply plunked its bow-tie on that advanced V8, even though Chevrolet doesn’t make an overhead-cam V8 for production.
Ford Motor Company has been ahead of the curve on all that, transferring its main power units to overhead-camshaft engine designs with the modular 4.6-liter V8 a decade ago. That engine is a workhorse in cars and trucks, and can be enhanced to dual-overhead-cam, 4-valve-per-cylinder status for application in such stalwarts as the Mustang Cobra.
So when Ford decides to make a retro-type hot rod for the street, it starts out with some higher technology. So the Marauder could give a giant boost to Mercury, which has spent the last couple of decades being little more than a slightly upscale escort — you should pardon the expression — for various Ford products. The brand has even been phased out of operation in Canada, where the only Mercury vehicles you can buy you must now buy through Ford dealers.
Building the Marauder wasn’t all that much of a stretch. Mercury already had the Grand Marquis, its version of the Ford Crown Victoria, a large sedan that saw most of its service seeming to go to police departments as large cruisers. Mercury builds over 100,000 Grand Marquis sedans, and it has gotten the go-ahead to carve 18,000 annual Marauders out of that total.
The sedan is already being built, with a companion convertible still ranking as a concept vehicle. I was invited along with a number of midwest automotive journalists to gather in the Milwaukee area to the MGA Research Corporation proving grounds and crash-test site for a preliminary wringing out of the Marauder. Located just southwest of Burlington, Wis., the site was originally built by Nash-Kelvinator to be near its Kenosha, Wis., plant, and it now serves various functions for MGA, located within an hour of Milwaukee, Chicago and Madison.
We had a blast with the Marauders. The name was resurrected from the 1963 performance models of the same name, built on the large Montclair/Monterey models. Parnelli Jones won the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in a 1963 Marauder. After a year, it went away, to come back in 1969 and 1970, the absolute peak of high-performance cars.
The new one is impressive. Painted all black, with a blacked-out grille, the Marauder’s true beauty starts at ground level, with flashy 18-inch chromed wheels shod with new and specifically tested BF Goodrich g-force T/A high-performance tires. The car rides on all-new suspension on an enhanced frame, with strengthened hyrdroformed steel front rails for safety up front, a second cast-aluminum cross-member, which serves as the location for engine mount, suspension control arms and the “rack” part of the new steering rack-and-pinion, and a steel cross-member designed to resist torsion and bending while helping transfer side-impact crash forces across the frame structure to the opposite rail.
In real-world terms, all of that stiffens the frame’s torsional rigidity 24 percent, and its resistance to vertical bending by 20 percent. That helps limit the noise, vibration and harshness — the good-ol’ NVH that engineers fight with every vehicle. It also allows the chassis dynamics guys to play with the suspension parts to enhance precise handling, instead of using shocks and springs to counteract flexing before thinking about handling. Coil-over-shock springs and Tokico tunable monotube dampers bolster the independent front suspension, renewed with steel upper and aluminum lower control arms. A 28-mm stabilizer bar takes the stiffness to another step, still without ever feeling harsh.
In the rear, the live-axle suspension has load-leveling air springs to help maintain ride height even when the trunk is fully loaded, which means 21.6 cubic feet of cavernous space, and a 21-mm stabilizer bar further improves the firm stance in cornering. All of that, and the new rack-and-pinion steering, make the Marauder surprisingly nimble, even around the special slalom course the Ford folks had set up at the MGA facility. Yes, the body leaned a bit when you truly pushed it, but the steering and cornering ability remained precise.
While Ford has adapted the 4.6 engine in various ways, from the basic cast-iron, 2-valve, everyday engine to the hand-built, all-aluminum, DOHC Cobra version, the Marauder engine is a bit of a combination. It takes the 4.6 and makes it all aluminum, with the DOHC and 4-valve technology. A low-restriction air intake and aluminum upper and lower intake manifolds plunge premium fuel through dual-bore 57-mm fuel injectors.
The 302 horsepower peak at 5,750 RPMs, and the 310 torque peak is achieved at 4,250 RPMs. And those numbers were also utilized by the engineers, who borrowed from their drag-racing history to come up with a reinforced 11.25-inch high-stall-speed torque converter on the 4-speed automatic transmission. The high stall speed allows engine revs to build up before torque is sent to the rear wheels. When you hammer the throttle on takeoff, the automatic upshifts from first to second at 6,000 revs, and from second to third at 6,200 — just under the 6,250 redline. That’s fun, because most engines would shift at lower revs, maybe even below the power peaks, unless you could hand-shift them.
Steve Babcock, the project engineer on the Marauder, said great attention to detail also was paid to the wheels and tires, with the 235/50 front and 245/55 rears on those 10-spoke wheels. “We wanted all muscle-car parts, so we started off with the Goodrich Comp T/A HR4, but they didn’t have quite the right rear tire. They developed this ‘W’ rated tire, which means its good for 168 miles per hour, and it’s great for traction in the dry, and very good in rain, while also being a 40,000-mile tire. We also went after a KDWS — which stands for Key: Dry, Wet, Snow — and they came up with a design that we found was 98 percent as good in snow as our all-season tires.”
Such attention to detail is impressive, and it gives the Marauder its final stick-to-the-road ability to complement getting all that power down. When you’ve got to deal with snow, ice and hills for a good part of the year, a front-engine/rear-drive muscle car might seem a little out of your realm. But returning to the realm of muscle cars, with modern technology complementing a retro look, who can argue with the Marauder’s potential?
[[[[[cutlines:
1/ The Mercury Marauder looks even sleeker next to a roadside military tank museum near Milwaukee.
2/ The rear shows off the twin chromed exhaust tubes that finish off the high-powered new Marauder powertrain.
3/ Even when pushed around the cones of an autocross circuit, the Marauder remained stable and precise.
4/ White-faced instruments and a businesslike interior complement the no-nonsense, muscle-car image. ]]]]]]]
Arrogance is never attractive
[Gilbert/Viewpoint 10/17/98]
Arrogance, whether real
or perceived, is ugly
The University of Minnesota hockey program worked feverishly to develop itself as a fortress from which Minnesota hockey players could take on the world. The late, and sorely missed, John Mariucci took his Gophers to places like Eveleth, at their own expense, to play developing programs such as UMD’s, for the good of hockey.
Glen Sonmor took the Gophers to Madison to play the developing program at Wisconsin on a midweek bustrip down and back when the Gophers had an enormous WCHA series against North Dakota the previous weekend, and another coming up at Michigan the following weekend. Herb Brooks was next, and he took his Gophers on the busride to Eveleth and back to play UMD in a U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame game, asking only for box lunches for his players in return.
Ah, the good ol’ days, when the air of generosity, humility, and what was good for hockey in Minnesota continued.
A few years ago, when the prices went up from $8 to $11 a ticket in old Mariucci Arena, coach Doug Woog expressed genuine concern, because hockey had always been a blue-collar sport for blue-collar fans, and he said he hated to see Gopher hockey become an elitist event.
Times change. The Gophers now play in a beautiful, still-new Mariucci Arena, where they’ve set national records for college hockey attendance, and tickets go for $21. Corporate ticket buyers, who might be baseball-basketball-football types, have driven the prices up, crowded the students to the end seats, and assure there will be 1,000 or more empty seats between the blue lines at every home game. Outside, masses of real, blue-collar fans are left in the cold, trying to buy tickets to sellouts.
A newly created perception of arrogance hangs heavy around the Gopher hockey program these days, and it is an ill-fitting cloak to those who remember the glory days of less glitz but a whole lot more humility and hard-core success.
It is important for hockey that the University of Minnesota program be strong and clean. Which does not mean that everyone else, including UMD and St. Cloud State — maybe especially UMD and St. Cloud State — strive to whip the Gophers in recruiting and on the ice, every time they get the chance. We can only wonder why Duluth, St. Cloud and other areas tolerate having every Gopher game televised by MSC cable into the cable-equipped homes of fans in the UMD, St. Cloud and other regions. It’s good business, good promotion, good for the Gophers, and to-hell-with-the-rest-of-’em.
Certainly a lot of the top prospects in the state still want to be Gophers, but more and more they are looking at valid alternatives, such as UMD, St. Cloud State, North Dakota, Colorado College and Wisconsin. Top players Erik Rasmussen, Mike Crowley and Ben Clymer have left the Gophers as underclassmen at the rate of one-star-per-year over the last three years. Is it inner turmoil, damage control from recent allegations, this perceived arrogance, or a combination of such factors?
When the Gophers look down upon their rivals, it is arrogance of the worst kind. When they spin-doctor their rescue of the financially-strapped U.S. Hall of Fame by going across the river to Target Center to draw 17,000 a game to the Hall game two years in a row, all the while quietly skimming their normal home-game 9,000-plus season-ticket profit off the top, it’s different from the old days.
Manipulating for such exempted games, which don’t count in the NCAA scheduling limit but make extra money and provide an advantage in experience, is a major benefit. The Gophers have five such games this season, then they “complain” about having a tough schedule.
Last spring, the Gophers had to go to Duluth to face UMD in the WCHA playoffs, they took out huge ads Up North trying to suggest that hockey fans could turn the DECC into a Gopher homesite, it not only displayed arrogance but it made it altogether fitting and proper that UMD ended the Gophers season.
It’s a new season. Last week a weekly tabloid called “Let’s Play Hockey” promoted its flashy 12-page section on the Gopher hockey program, with about a dozen LPH staff-written stories, capsules on every player in the program, and photos. It was impressive. If someone noticed that there was nothing on UMD, St. Cloud State, Minnesota State-Mankato, or Bemidji State in that issue, it became understood when it was explained that the University of Minnesota had paid to have that section written. It was an ad.
Hired guns pay to hire guns to shoot either real bullets or blanks. Clever marketing? Spin-doctoring? Creative promotion? Up North, a lot of hard-core, grass-roots, blue-collar hockey folks might just call it arrogant.
The players in that program, almost all of them great kids, deserve better.
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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