Explorer Sport Offers Twin-Turbo Ecoboost For Just North of $40K
When I was a young pup shucking out new Willow Green 1995 Explorer XLTs at MSRP or close to it, the Explorer Sport was the unwanted, low-markup, undesirable-demographic, showroom-poison, short-wheelbase, ugly-duckling, obvious-descendant-of-the-Bronco-II, credit-criminal-friendly… oh, you get the idea, right? Nobody wanted them and we didn’t bother to stock them in any quantity.
Those days are long gone, and so is the two-door SUV; the last short-wheelbase Explorer to darken a dealer’s floorplan left the factory over a decade ago. Now, Explorer “Sport” means six-cylinder Ecoboost.
The Explorer Sport is the only Explorer with a base price over $40,000, but it’s reasonably well-equipped and, as seen below, arrives with all the goodies for under fifty grand. Put aside for the moment the fact that fully-loaded Explorers used to sell for thirty K, and it could almost be considered a value. Your humble author continues, however, to recommend the Flex over the Explorer; it does everything the “SUV” might reasonably be expected to do, offers a better third row, and looks like a design statement instead of a melted soap bar.
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The Ford websites sucks like a Hoover. Unless you use Internet Explorer. Methinks ford has drank the Redmond kool-aid. Also, no V-6 Mustang convertible and performance package. Idiots.
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Right, right and right. Turbo engines have a few more parts that can fail and run a bit hotter. Give me a simple V8 any day. Zero chance of that in a Taurus based Explorer, but I'd get the Egoboost because it's over 5,000 lbs wet. @86SN2001, I'm not aware of a turbo'd engine that was specifically problematic for Ford. The Egoboost in the F-150 does beat the V8's MPG, although when both are loaded down and driven hard the V8 gets better MPG because it isn't working as hard. The point of the Egoboost is to give the heavy Explorer the V8 power it needs and that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a pig at the pump. If you drive both a normal 3.5 and Egoboost Explorers fully loaded and up a grade, the 3.5 will get worked harder and burn more fuel to keep up.
Montero SPORT: Not a Montero Outlander SPORT: Not an Outlander SX4 SPORT: 5-door OLD Explorer SPORT: 2-door Edge/Explorer SPORT: Ecoboost The use of SPORT continues to be...erratic.