]Engineer on the Explorer program here. All I can say about this entire vehicle is “Look how they massacred my girl.” I expected nothing less coming into this review, but it hurts to hear nonetheless as an engineer who takes pride in his work. Your final thoughts nutshell what’s wrong with U625 perfectly, although as with any nutshell, it doesn’t give a good sense of the scale of the issue. It wasn’t just the plant, or the engineers, or the designers, or the management, or the workers. This program has suffered so many cock-ups that literally everyone involved has made a contribution to this end result.
The Fields administration wasted far too much time and money switching the Explorer back to RWD for “platform synergies.” The CD6 platform’s cost ballooned out of control and became hopelessly delayed as they tried to develop an architecture that would be able to underpin nearly 10 different cars - that failed so badly that most the vehicles whose future relied on CD6 were outright canceled or stayed on older platforms, with the Explorer and Aviator being the only two left. The platform was then re-optimized for the SUVs at the insistence of project leads, who wanted to sell it on performance and supposedly had research to back up their claims it would sell better if it handled better. It definitely does, but they were dead wrong about most consumers noticing, never mind caring, about the engine layout and primary driving wheels. Engineering was too worried about the new architecture and engines to devote adequate time to pretty much anything else.
The F-150 program requires about 120-200 test mules per new generation, spanning all trims and powertrain combinations. The Explorer program built over 300, and Aviator tacked on a more reasonable but still significant number. We ended up building nearly twice the number of test mules as the 2021 F-150 program did, and because of the need to keep building testers, the PP cars were delayed, meaning that the process of engineering that new assembly line had to be compacted down to meet the deadlines. Can’t make a line to build the cars without knowing how the car is built, after all. Chicago Assembly being its typical shithole self (engineers and management alike were practically dragged kicking and screaming into choosing Chicago) finished off any hope of this launch being anything short of disastrous.
I’m still a firm believer in the Blue Oval, and, flawed as she is, I proudly stand by the Explorer, enough to order an ST for myself - it arrives later this year. The sad truth is that this has been happening ever since Fields took the reins and focused on sucking up to Wall Street instead of running a car company. Nearly ever program started under him and inheriting his bullshit attitude if salutary neglect has stumbled. The 2020 Escape/Corsair are the only ones that haven’t, and that’s at least in part due to getting a free troubleshooting extension after Explorer pillaged a big chunk of staff to help out with fixing its own shitstorm. Hackett has not done anywhere near enough to fix this, but some effort towards a better culture is better than actively destroying it. Ford will learn; the question is how long until it forgets again.