Jason Shafer’s latest company ride had me thinking of the Ford Explorer we bought almost exactly 25 years ago, a 1998 XLT with the 5.0, yo! Me and the wife-to-be woz whippin’ around the ‘burbs without a care (or a child for that matter) in the world! Well, no cares besides the 14mpgeeeezzz that’s horrible. But gas was still cheap-ish and Ford’s money really was cheap (0.9%). And I had more hair on my head so all was good.
Someone left a comment the other day on the used car buying article opining that there seem to not be as many used cars available anymore and perhaps it was still due to “Cash For Clunkers”, the government’s buyback scheme of mid-2009. I won’t get into the politics of it (and neither shall you, right? Right!) but the Ford Explorer was the #1 trade-in for that program. However, C4C really didn’t make that much of a dent in my opinion, given that the total number of vehicles traded was “only” 677,091 (against 10.2 million new vehicles sold in the U.S., itself a low point.) AND you had to buy a new vehicle, so presumably at least some of them resulted in new vehicle replacements that would not have otherwise occurred. However, keep in mind there were 254 MILLION vehicles in circulation in the U.S. in 2009. So no, not a big percentage, or one out of every 375 vehicles meaning that for every C4C car, there were/are still 374 others on the road. And even the Explorer, as the most popular “clunker”, only amounted to 58,288 “lost” when counting 1991-2003 models and even including the Mercury Mountaineer, its Dolly the sheep version.
It’ll surprise precisely nobody when I reveal that I wasn’t leaning on the fender of our Explorer anymore by 2009, no sirree, not even close, we traded that thing in on a thrifty 2001 Volvo turbo wagon a couple of years into our tenure with it without waiting for D.C. to come to the rescue. It did have a brand new set of tires courtesy of Ford and Firestone though!
Today I had occasion to be at the junkyard in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and let me tell you, Wyoming has a big soft spot for the Explorer. The opening shot is the most recent row of vehicles to be placed in the Ford section of the yard (which happens randomly more or less as they are dropped off by people and the ‘yard gets around to draining the fluids and collecting the coins from under the cushions), and as you may note consists of five Explorers, two Taurus/Sables, and a lone ’94 Mustang. That’s pretty much the mix overall in the Ford section, although there’s usually a Fusion or an Escape to mix it up a bit. But definitely NO shortage of C4C-era Explorers…so let’s just look at these random examples!
This is the one that got dropped in the yard as I was walking by and gave me the impetus to waste some pixels. It pretty much represents the average Explorer of that heady decade when everyone wanted one and used their HELOC to get one. Post-facelift (a softer and more cuddly front end), and of course the luscious dark green paint.
XLT trim here but without the upgraded interior, so these kind of flat, non-bolstered seats in a boring gray color. Still, they held up quite well. How well?
270,726 miles kind of well! That’s quite good, even for Wyoming where people measure distances in hours instead of miles and the cars don’t often get turned off which of course negates any hard-starting issues that might arise otherwise.
The little tap on the rear end probably did this one in, as in polite company that’s a no-no nowadays and with that kind of mileage, well, the payout probably wasn’t huge but maybe enough to pay for a bag of groceries or two. I do prefer this rear hatch style to the one we had in ’98; the handle to twist left or right for whole hatch or glass only was well-done. But what’s next?
Ah, the next generation, a 2002, a significant revision after the big tire fiasco but clearly still hewing to the same formula that had worked well so far. This one is the somewhat fancy Eddie Bauer trim level. Eddie Bauer was an outdoorsy clothing and gear brand popular in the malls and Ford hooked up with them (him?) sometime in the mid 1980s to help move some outdoorsy Ford products. It worked, the hallmark is sort of a tan-ish lower body trim, although by ’02 it had a lot of gray in it (like Eddie too, presumably).
As I recall, by this time Eddie Bauers got leather trim standard whereas in the old Bronco II you got tan cloth seats with a little pine tree pattern. The interior on the new generation here was similar to the old but a little more squared-off again.
They also got digital odometers, the bane of my Curbside Recycling existence…At least the more or less full gauge package remained.
None of this generation survived more than a couple of years without the plastic panel under the rear window that holds the Ford emblem cracking in half and in this case, part of it actually fell off for good measure. My in-laws had one of these (a 2002 in super base form, cloth, RWD, V6, zero options) and it is still running around L.A. in my sister-in-law’s employ. Its plastic cracked sometime around 2006 or so and was remedied by some random sticker the inlaws had laying around which didn’t make it look any better and if anything just resulted in drawing more attention to the defect. Still, it’s not dead yet, unlike this one, and 22 hard unloved years under my sister-in-law’s thumb isn’t an easy feat, let me tell you.
Of course this one has the 4.6 V8, a variant of the Mustang engine (and various other applications, of course). In this application it produced 239hp and 282lb-ft of torque which was well matched to the truck in its day, in my opinion. There was no obvious clue as to why it ended up here, Wyoming has no emissions checks so that’s not it.
Conveniently next up is the Mercury version of that Explorer, named the Mountaineer, in this case a 2003. Presumably Mercury was feeling left out of the SUV party so got a version to try to keep the lights on (okay, and the Mariner as well, the Escape’s twin (spoiler: it didn’t work)). This one obviously had a run-in with something more solid that put it away for good. Besides traveling long distances, Wyomingites also tend to have a heavy foot that doesn’t always move to the other pedal very fast (heavy things don’t move fast) and well, stuff happens.
Just like impacting a cloud, they said! Not really. But no blood all over this one so I guess it worked well enough. Leather everywhere in most (all?) of the Mountaineers, no Gore-tex in sight, not even on the airbag but I already mentioned that.
Along with the different headlights and taillights you also got white-faced gauges to match the driver’s own face after impact and considering how he’s going to get home. Home is only four hours away from the corner store, dontchaknow, and there’s only three beers left now.
This one was a young’un, 85,000’s the average three or so year tally up here, not two decades plus. Perhaps it was waiting on new struts or something for a while? These sold quite well in 2002 and decently in 2003, they seemed to drop off a bit after that but keep in mind that back in the day the Explorer almost always sold over 300,000 copies EVERY year in the U.S. alone with many years totaling up to over 400,000, at least until 2005 or so when it started to taper off significantly – in relation to the original premise, 58,000 of these removed from the roads in only a couple of months production, you wouldn’t even notice. And it’s kind of shocking how many are left and end up in the junkyards nowadays, there is always a healthy contingent available of most years/colors/trims/etc. And if not, just come back next week.
See, even paying more for the same car doesn’t fix the cracking plastic piece. At least it didn’t fall off this time, just a little plumber’s butt. Maybe someone could pull the lower tailgate up a bit.
All the fixin’s on this one, it’s even the color of a baked potato to boot! That reminds me, yes, the V8 models were full-time AWD whereas the six in 4.0l form had a normal transfer case (or transfer case button as the case may be). Full-time AWD because that’s the next best way to use more fuel after already going for the V8, by golly! It wasn’t until another decade that Ford figured out that making the fuel leak out of the car in multiple ways is far more efficient (2013 and 2020 Explorer models), and have now apparently expanded that program to other models as well! Oh, Ford, we love you, don’t ever change!
This is the granddaddy of this row’s batch, a 1993, so a third-year example. A few rows over though there is a first year example in what I think is even the launch edition trim, i.e. the silver gray with the striped bordello-red interior. This one’s in sort of a blue color, again an XLT but with the older flat front showing off its Ford Ranger roots. Roots that is, insofar as roots are the rock bottom price of a Ranger which started at a bit over $8000 in 1991 and contrasts with the lowest branch of the 4-door Explorer tree which started in the mid $16k area (a bit lower for the comparatively rare 2-door version). Easier than re-inventing offset lithography and printing money the old way…
This one has my favorite Explorer seats, the optional heavily bolstered ones with the thick cloth on the center portion and a movable thigh extension. This one’s collapsing a bit from age though but you can’t knock the fabric itself, it’s holding up well.
After three decades in Wyoming I’ll venture that the mileage is actually 257,000. Who knows if it has the original oily bits under the hood, but if rust is avoided these Explorers do tend to go some distance.
I can’t recall what that rear alloy wheel is from, it’s from something else, but this one’s another XLT, the ever popular middle trim level. You could get XL (which you only got if you were in the government or liked sweaty vinyl seats), XLT for everyman in several sublevels, Eddie Bauer if you shopped at the mall in your hiking boots (or flip-flops, what’s the diff), and the Limited which was not-so-limited in its overall garishness (think monotone paint and then extremely ornate script badging, Lido must have been invited back for lunch or something).
What you did get in every Explorer was a V6 (or optionally starting in ’96 a V8), non-U.S. readers may not realize that we never got a 4cylinder option nor a diesel one. 4 liters was the smallest engine displacement.
And finally anchoring this row is this 1997 XLT which also somehow had a not-so-small overlap passenger side event.
More leather, someone stepped up as it wasn’t a cheap option as I remember, but green on tan always works, there’s nothing like a British Racing Green Ford SUV and then you can lace up your driving gloves that match the seats.
225,502 miles, not too shabby either, and probably had plenty more to give before it gave all of itself to something ahead and to the right.
I remember being excited to note that our own Explorer also had the “tow package” per the build sheet (even though I loathe towing and avoid it whenever possible), and then was disappointed to realize it consisted of a small cardboard box with a ball hitch that fitted into the bumper as this one has and I think a wiring loom attachment. So much for easily carrying the bicycles to wherever we were wanting to take them to ride around instead of just riding there to begin with…
And so no, there is no shortage of Ford Explorers as C4C poster children in the wild, at least not of the two-to-three-decade-old variety. Perhaps people are just holding on to them, or they all migrated to Wyoming. For a state with a population of under 600,000 people, they sure to do seem to be fond of one of Ford’s biggest hits of the 1990s and early aughts.
Some months back I realized I had not seen a first-generation Explorer in what seemed like eons. It appears they all migrated to Wyoming. Exercise is good for the aging and there is a lot of room to exercise an Explorer in Wyoming, so that’s not a bad thing.
From the number of these Explorers that used to roam the highways and byways, and by whom they were often piloted by, using that HELOC isn’t any stretch of the imagination. Yet they all disappeared and as you rightly point out, C4C cannot take any credit for that. Having no experience with these, it’s always made me curious about what happened.
All those Taurii (like the white one in your first picture) seem to be on the same trajectory as the Explorer.
Fun! Except for the ones that hit stuff, that’s rather un-fun. I always liked that dark green paint too.
As always the lack of rust is interesting, these all look like 5 year old vehicles to me but I suppose that’s a statement on my age as well.
An Explorer 5.0 is still an excellent salvage yard engine buy. Retrospectively, I peruse the salvage yard sites for them, even though I’ve already rebuilt the 289 in my Mustang. The last time I checked, you can pick one up for a few hundred dollars, and they rarely suffer from significant bore wear. AND they have GT40 or GT40P heads, which are better than pretty much any factory small-block cylinder head.
Problem with these is they tended to out live their useful life cycle at the country club. And there is NOTHING wrong with 14mpg unless you are a spoiled brat.
I guess I am a spoiled brat. I simply couldn’t afford to drive a car that got 14 mpg.
Nothing wrong with 14 MPG? Huh? Spoiled brat? Only spoiled brats could afford to drive a car that only gets 14 MPG.
My explorer looks like this
My explorer looks like this
I still see dilapidated examples of the facelifted first-gen Explorers (1995-2000) here in DFW, often hauling tools, ladders and construction crews to job sites. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of the original 1991-94 flat-nosed models, though.
I bought a 1991 XL that was optioned up to XLT levels a few months after the model was introduced. As a family vehicle, the four-door configuration and space for five people were key selling points, as was the utility part of the equation (I hauled a 1000 sq ft of sod in it when it was a few months old). Overall, though, early Explorers were unrefined, rough riding beasts, and ours suffered all manner of suspension problems, with front bushings replaced several times, realignment required every 4-6 months, and the infamous Firestone tires wearing far too quickly. Gas mileage was mediocre, averaging around 17 mpg in mostly suburban driving.
To Ford’s credit, continuous refinement made later versions of these much more livable for the vast majority of owners and the examples profiled here are proof of their durability.
Cash for clunkers stimulated my economy a bit, the 5.0 used in them is essentially the same one as that found in the 93-95 SVT Cobra Mustangs and were a great budget upgrade over the standard 5.0 manifolds. I pulled and resold a dozen or so on Craigslist and forums and was able to get enough proceeds to throw money into my 14mpg clunker that roams the streets to this day. Take that government!
I think people(as per usual) get a little too caught up in the politics of that program, my biggest peeve was the requirement that all cars in the program had to be in running condition and then contradictorily have their crankcases filled with liquid glass and ran at wide open throttle to make sure they’d not get resold…. or in my case even salvaged. It seems to me that #1 running 700,000 engines at WOT where there is programmed fuel enrichment until seizing is not good for the environment and #2 it screws the little guy who uses salvage yards to keep their old vehicles running which “clunker” or not is literally one of the three Rs in the recycling slogan. Reuse is green too, and considering the short lived nature of the penalty boxes purchased through the programs incentive the amortization of keeping an old car alive probably was better for the environment than all the first gen Cruzes that are almost all in the great junkyard in the sky themselves at this point.
Yeah, the part of the C4C program that required the engine be damaged beyond repair seemed ill-conceived. I mean, c’mon, how many junked, so-called ‘polluting gas-guzzlers’ would actually end up being recycled by the poor schlubs trying to keep their old car running on the cheap?
To that end, one of the sadder automotive things I saw was a video where an old six-cylinder XJ Cherokee got fed the concoction and struggled to stay running which seemed like an interminable amount of time, finally sputtering to silence.
The program spec apparently called for the engines to be run at 2,000 rpm, not WOT, and if that didn’t work after a few minutes to turn off, allow engine to cool, and then start again. The reason was to avoid potential danger to bystanders from an overheated engine having some sort of unintended catastrophic failure. I’m not saying that the procedure was followed correctly in all or even any cases.
The point of having running engines in the program was to actually remove some of the more inefficient ones from the pool, I’m not judging one way or the other. However, a non-running car is already not emitting anything, i.e. it has removed itself without any effort from anyone, if that were allowed then everyone would be complaining about handouts.
The point of destroying the engines was precisely to prevent re-use, if not here, then abroad, apparently other countries did similar things and found the entire vehicles just being exported to other markets, again, not really helpful in achieving the goal. Conversely nothing stops anyone from selling their car to someone abroad or to a dealer to send it abroad, it’s just not an automatic $4500 or whatever payday.
The top three selling “replacement” vehicles were the Corolla, Civic, and Camry. They may be “penalty boxes” to some but I don’t know if they could realistically be called “short-lived”. The Cruze didn’t make the top ten, most likely due to not beginning production until the end of 2010.
This was just from my reading of Wiki, I don’t have a dog in this fight one way or the other really.
What I remember most about C4C was how, almost instantly, all new small cars were scarfed up, save one: the Dodge Caliber. All of the decent small cars were bought, yet no one wanted a Caliber, even with the sweet trade-in of $4k for any old junker that could be, somehow, dragged into a dealership.
And the whole thing was recently repeated during COVID. Just about every car was bought with big mark-ups due to inventory shortage, except for the Jeep Renegade. Sheesh, how bad do Chrysler products have to be that no one wants one even in the most trying of circumstances?
The 02 and up is not a slightly reworked version of the original, it was a clean sheet design.
The frame was all new with hydroformed tubing replacing the C-channel side rails and welding now securing it together instead of rivets. A tall spindle, coil-over SLA replaced the torsion bar SLA of its predecessor which had replaced the TTB front end used on the first units. Out back the leaf springs and stick axle were replaced by a coil over sprung IRS.
Ah, the bait worked, welcome back! 🙂 Text amended, thank you.
Why did I dislike these so much? Because it was the first SUV bought by huge numbers by folks that were never going to take them off-road. It was a classic American fad-mobile, typically piloted to school or the mall by a woman with kids in the back. The Country Squire of the 90’s and 00’s. Serious image issues and not for me (says the guy who bought a Grand Caravan in ’92).
“It was a classic American fad-mobile, typically piloted to school or the mall by a woman with kids in the back.”
Before I had my license, I was part of a carpool to and from the high school with a few friends. One of the moms drove a seafoam green 1997 Explorer Limited. Decked out, full leather. His father was a real estate agent and drove a Jag–and XJ, the real deal. This Explorer was considered swanky enough for his mom, in casual business attire and perfect makeup, who played the Evita soundtrack every single blasted day at volumes that more or less shut conversation down.
Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers.
I never saw the appeal of that Explorer as a luxury car. It rode like a truck, the interior materials felt like a truck’s, and the dashboard was very clearly from a Ford Ranger and hadn’t gained much prestige in the move to that SUV.
I saw a version of that first gen dash because we had a 93 Ranger, which had a new body but didn’t get a new interior until 95. There’s a 2 door Explorer still in regular use a few blocks from me in a very period collection with a late 90s Bonneville and a derelict B5 Passat. While I used to see plenty of Explorers we never owned one or even knew someone who did.
For sheer perversity I’d want a Mazda Navajo the short lived badge engineered 2 door Explorer from before Mazda went the crossover route.
Cash for Clunkers was definitely in the enthusiast news but it passed me by. Both of my cars were small and from the mid 90s so I wasn’t going to take on a $300 a month car payment to save $20 a month on gas.
Amazing how Americans freak out over the price of gas, innit? “Oh, no! The price of gas went up! Gotta trade for a smaller car!” “Oh, goody! The price of gas went down! Time to trade the small car for a larger car!”
Those mid ’90s small cars likely would’ve been ineligible anyway, there was a maximum MPG requirement. Likewise, due to a change in how EPA fuel economy numbers were calculated that year nothing older than 1985 made the cut.
On the flip side, a lot of Geo Metros probably got rebuilds in 2008-09 that earned them several more years on the road. To @The Phantom Cheese’s point, part of what led to the Legend of Cash For Clunkers was a mismatch in what was available in the used-car pool and what people wanted when gas got cheap again around 2014 (due to OPEC, Saudi in particular, intentionally flooding the market to knock back competition from renewables and American domestic production) and what was available on the used-car market. Even then, that mostly applied to the 2008-and-up late models.
During the ‘Cash For Clunkers’ era, my brother was working at a Dodge/Ram/Chrysler/Jeep store and was tasked with processing the ‘Clunker’ trade-ins. He commented that Explorers were indeed the most common vehicles traded in under the program (usually for a new Cherokee). Part of the program was to destroy the engine by pouring some solution into the oil and running it until it siezed. Funny thing was many of the V-6 Explorers taken in already were making ominous engine noises and barely running! He saw few in any Explorer V-8’s, but one of the other common ‘Clunker’ trades were Aerostars.
I thought about turning in a 93 Crown Victoria that was nearing the end of its lifespan, but was surprised to find that it was not eligible – it did not get bad enough fuel mileage, missing the cutoff by 1 mpg. So, I kept it because it was economical. 🙂
Explorers have oddly been a big part of our family: Parents had the first one, a ’96 XLT that provided trouble free albeit limited service for almost 20 years. My ex and I had a ’98 four door XLT with some dealer installed graphics package, it was a very capable machine for probably 10+ years. It hauled our kid and Rottweiller around quite well and eventually towed a small trailer for her.
My sister had a ’94 that i drove around for a while when they were done with it. Again, trouble free more or less. All were 4.0 V6, part time 4WD and never saw much off road. Two of them exceeded 150,000 miles and went onto new owners.
My parents are in a 2022 now, again that sees very limited use.
Cool write up. I enjoyed seeing that.
Here’s my 2003 Mountaineer. From car seats to college and beyond. Favorite feature is the split lift gate. Least favorite is the crack in the tail gate trim. 🤪
Sometimes the image is too large, it needs to be resized to under 1200 pixels, or if you have a choice of 4 sizes use the second smallest one…
The photo
Like the first gen Jeep Liberty, these were overbuilt for their typical role. And paid a heavy price, in excessive weight. Like the Liberty, they were not that large.
I was stunned to see someone still blaming C4C for used-car prices in 2024. Out of the total 677,091 traded in under that 2009 program, I’d be surprised if even those 91 of them had another FIFTEEN years on the road left in them. From my informal survey of the back of dealer lots, most wouldn’t have made it another 15 months.
My friend was one of those people who turned an Explorer in for C4C. It was a 94 and had over 250k on it when it met its fate. Highly unlikely it would have survived to this day.
What cassette single might I have in my new ’90 Explorer? lol
I still remember seeing an Explorer at a local Ford dealer before they went on sale. I failed to understand at the time what a big deal the vehicle would be. I will say that nobody did a better job than Ford at that time of putting out a vehicle that had massive showroom appeal.
I wonder if there is a single example of the later generation on which the plastic panel on the tailgate remains uncracked.
If there is one, it is one of those that has something like 20k miles on it and it has been parked in a climate controlled garage for all of its life.
The problem is the different expansion and contraction rates between the plastic piece and the glass it is stuck to. If I park our black one in the sun on a warm or hot day the gap will close up completely. In the middle of winter and it is huge.
What a great article! I’m still honing my writing skills
I never gave much of a thought to the Explorer. In 1992 we were still looking at mini vans while my sister was proudly showing off her new Roadmaster Estate wagon.
We went full throttle into a 1992 Blazer (my next COAL entry) and then I drove several Explorers. The Chevy was definitely not as refined but was somewhat cheaper.
The Explorer hit fashion and function at the same time. The four door model was useful for families and it held as much as most mid sized wagons did. It projected the right image. Ford really screwed up by not ensuring that they were safe handling with good tires. I like them, but never see an older model dolled up in Overlander Style. I had a twenty plus year old 5.0 XLT RWD and I liked it. It was “fun” to drive in a hard to explain way. Mine had the regular dual arm with torsion bar suspension in front and handled fine, though I never let it get away from me. Ford learned how to make trucks handle really well. I just got back from vacation and I was passed by so many Super Dutys doing 75 mph, up and down the Oregon mountains. I’ll admit that my F150 handles just as well.
Only 14MPG ! that’s terrible and I think perhaps why so many clean Exploders are showing up in the So. Cal. LKQ junkyards .
This is the same basic platform Ford used to the Rangers, I have up graded my little Ranger using interior bits fom cherry low mileage Exploders .
I wonder if I could shoe horn the stock V8 and EFI from one of these into my Ranger and make a dangerous beast ? .
-Nate