Should I buy a Ford Explorer or Expedition?

[88Comrade2000]

Buy Japanese!

[TradeTheBeal!]

Buy Japanese!

Sweet! My Explorer needs a tankful of Japanese premium gas. Can I also a pair of 19 yr old twin Osaka Tech coeds for the back seat and a nice in-dash CD changer. Do the Japanese offer audio equipment?

[ItaliaMuscle]

expedition all the way! i love mine even though it was the first model they made and it is a beast!

[Chief skin]

FORD FIX OR REPAIR DAILY then we have GM JUNK buy a nissan save yourself a lot of aggrivation

[mjah]

Is this going to be a family vehicle? If so, safety should be your #1 priority.

If you truly need an SUV -- like, maybe for your 7 kids or your burgeoning garden gnome rental service or whatever -- then by all means, get it. Go into it with your eyes open to the safety compromises you will be making. Rationalize it by saying, "It's the only vehicle that suits my essential needs."

But if you're interested in safety, gas mileage, stability, a good vehicle for reasonably sized families, etc., do not listen to the jokers who are just looking to suck in another lemming with the phony "SUVs = safety" argument.

The vast majority of SUVs -- particularly large SUVs -- are regular truck frames, perhaps slightly modified, with a different body bolted on top. They are incredibly profitable for the American automakers, who depend critically upon their continued sales to staunch their titanic hemmorhages of red ink.

For that reason, I would no sooner believe a Ford salesman extolling the virtues of a new Expedition than a Scientologist at my door extolling the virtues of an E-meter test.

[GeorgeAllen]

Yeah, I test drove a Honda Pilot today and I think I am going to buy one. As I thought about the Fords and read user reviews I found that the bad really outweighed the good. Thanks for all the insight and feedback everyone. HTTR

[Larry]

But if you're interested in safety, gas mileage, stability, a good vehicle for reasonably sized families, etc., do not listen to the jokers who are just looking to suck in another lemming with the phony "SUVs = safety" argument.

The vast majority of SUVs -- particularly large SUVs -- are regular truck frames, perhaps slightly modified, with a different body bolted on top. They are incredibly profitable for the American automakers, who depend critically upon their continued sales to staunch their titanic hemmorhages of red ink.

For that reason, I would no sooner believe a Ford salesman extolling the virtues of a new Expedition than a Scientologist at my door extolling the virtues of an E-meter test.

Despite the inflamatory rhetoric, SUVs fare better in collisions specifically because of that "regular truck frame".

Steel bumpers attached to a steel frame tend to win fights against decorative plastic over load-bearing sheet metal.

In my history driving Ford full-size trucks (pickups and SUVs), I've personally been in accidents where I've done more than $5K of damage to three seperate vehicles, and totaled two. (The one that wasn't totaled was a Suburban.) (If your wondering, none of the accidents was my "fault". In the last two, my vehicle was stopped.) None of these accidents required any repairs to my vehicle whatsoever. (Other than the last one, where both airbags went off, but no other "damage".)

(I do know a co-worker who was injured while in an SUV. He was stopped in a Suburban when an out-of-controll car hit his driver's side at 60 MPH (neatly missing both wheels, which would have taken a lot of the impact.) (He had a dislocated shoulder.))

So I won't say that driving an SUV renders someone Immune From Death. But, yeah, it really does improve your odds.

[justin_totti10]

Easy....2006 jeep grand cherokee SRT..last longer, faster,lighter and looks 1,000 times better

[mjah]

It's a shame that so many Americans have bought into the idea that a stiff, top-heavy, minimally maneuverable lumbering land yacht is safer than a car or minivan designed from the ground up to sacrifice itself for its driver's health.

This myth has probably been around for far longer than any of us has been alive, judging by the number of people out there who will parrot their local Ford dealer's empty rhetoric without subjecting it to the basic smell test. But it would be nice to see the public come to their collective senses and recognize it for the sham argument it is.

One can hardly blame people for buying into the "safe SUV" fad. After all, on the surface the idea that a truck is safer than a car makes some intuitive sense. People desperately want to believe that their cool, menacing trucks are safer than boring, wimpy looking cars and minivans. It seems to make sense that in a crash:

- Big > small

- Heavy > light

- High > low

- Momentum > maneuverability

- Stiff bumpers and frames > Unibody and crumple zones

Unfortunately, that's the problem with intuition. Sometimes it's dead wrong. And there are plenty of people out there who would be alive but for the misguided decision to buy a truck when a car or minivan would have done the job.

Now, far be it from me to recommend that every American make a point of researching well-supported statistics in order to, say, improve little Timmy's chances of surviving a crash. Clearly there are plenty of starry-eyed large vehicle owners out there who care more about coolness than their family's safety, whether they recognize that fact or not. Should the worst happen, as it does for plenty of truck owners each and every week, it will hang on their conscience -- not mine, thank God. Maybe in some small way they will be able to rationalize the decision to own the fundamentally more dangerous truck. If they're lucky, the differing rates of death and injury between cars and trucks won't come to their attention and they won't spend a lifetime second-guessing their priorities.

But for those of us who still have the opportunity to do well by our families -- take some time to look at the actual rates of injury and death suffered by people in trucks, and compare them with the average rates for people in cars. You will see something very surprising: Trucks don't seem to offer too many safety advantage over cars. And in a whole bunch of crashes, the trucks are actually far less safe.

Why? Because while it's an advantage to outweigh the other guy in a multi-car crash, it's a considerable disadvantage:

- When you can't get out of the way in the first place due to your sheer bulk.

- When trying to get out of the way flips your urban tank onto its roof.

- When your stiff, heavily bumpered vehicle transmits all that kinetic energy to your legs, torso and face.

In other words, the truck features that people rely on for safety are the very same features that magnify truck injury and death rates.

Add to this the fact that about half of all vehicle accidents involve running into stationary roadside objects -- a type of crash that puts trucks at a significant disadvantage due to their less stable body-on-frame designs -- and it should start to become clear that trucks simply aren't the safer vehicles they're advertised to be.

In fact, there have been several threads about this very topic on ExtremeSkins over the past few years, with plenty of documented research results scrutinized and questioned. By and large they have come to the same conclusion: A truck is not a "safety vehicle."

From my memory of fatality rates, I believe the actual danger hierarchy goes from most dangerous to least dangerous as follows:

- Non-SUV trucks

- SUVs

- Cars

- Minivans

...With SUVs edging out cars due to a combination of their similar occupant injury/fatality rates and their significantly higher kill rates.

Now, you can buy any vehicle you want in this country as long as it's street-legal. You can use any reason you want for that purchase. And plenty of folks make plenty of bad decisions of all kinds when they buy their cars, every single day.

But consider this silver lining: The really bad decisions -- the ones that jeopardize your safety and that of your family -- are also easily avoided by doing real research on the contraption that will send your family hurtling down the freeway at 70 mph in close proximity to hundreds of thousands of other vehicles. You can avoid the truly unfortunate and tragic pitfalls of vehicle purchase by recognizing that minivans and cars, by their very designs, are safer overall vehicles for you to use.

[TradeTheBeal!]

It's a shame that so many Americans have bought into the idea that a stiff, top-heavy, minimally maneuverable lumbering land yacht is safer than a car or minivan designed from the ground up to sacrifice itself for its driver's health.

This myth has probably been around for far longer than any of us has been alive, judging by the number of people out there who will parrot their local Ford dealer's empty rhetoric without subjecting it to the basic smell test. But it would be nice to see the public come to their collective senses and recognize it for the sham argument it is.

One can hardly blame people for buying into the "safe SUV" fad. After all, on the surface the idea that a truck is safer than a car makes some intuitive sense. People desperately want to believe that their cool, menacing trucks are safer than boring, wimpy looking cars and minivans. It seems to make sense that in a crash:

- Big > small

- Heavy > light

- High > low

- Momentum > maneuverability

- Stiff bumpers and frames > Unibody and crumple zones

Unfortunately, that's the problem with intuition. Sometimes it's dead wrong. And there are plenty of people out there who would be alive but for the misguided decision to buy a truck when a car or minivan would have done the job.

Now, far be it from me to recommend that every American make a point of researching well-supported statistics in order to, say, improve little Timmy's chances of surviving a crash. Clearly there are plenty of starry-eyed large vehicle owners out there who care more about coolness than their family's safety, whether they recognize that fact or not. Should the worst happen, as it does for plenty of truck owners each and every week, it will hang on their conscience -- not mine, thank God. Maybe in some small way they will be able to rationalize the decision to own the fundamentally more dangerous truck. If they're lucky, the differing rates of death and injury between cars and trucks won't come to their attention and they won't spend a lifetime second-guessing their priorities.

But for those of us who still have the opportunity to do well by our families -- take some time to look at the actual rates of injury and death suffered by people in trucks, and compare them with the average rates for people in cars. You will see something very surprising: Trucks don't seem to offer too many safety advantage over cars. And in a whole bunch of crashes, the trucks are actually far less safe.

Why? Because while it's an advantage to outweigh the other guy in a multi-car crash, it's a considerable disadvantage:

- When you can't get out of the way in the first place due to your sheer bulk.

- When trying to get out of the way flips your urban tank onto its roof.

- When your stiff, heavily bumpered vehicle transmits all that kinetic energy to your legs, torso and face.

In other words, the truck features that people rely on for safety are the very same features that magnify truck injury and death rates.

Add to this the fact that about half of all vehicle accidents involve running into stationary roadside objects -- a type of crash that puts trucks at a significant disadvantage due to their less stable body-on-frame designs -- and it should start to become clear that trucks simply aren't the safer vehicles they're advertised to be.

In fact, there have been several threads about this very topic on ExtremeSkins over the past few years, with plenty of documented research results scrutinized and questioned. By and large they have come to the same conclusion: A truck is not a "safety vehicle."

From my memory of fatality rates, I believe the actual danger hierarchy goes from most dangerous to least dangerous as follows:

- Non-SUV trucks

- SUVs

- Cars

- Minivans

...With SUVs edging out cars due to a combination of their similar occupant injury/fatality rates and their significantly higher kill rates.

Now, you can buy any vehicle you want in this country as long as it's street-legal. You can use any reason you want for that purchase. And plenty of folks make plenty of bad decisions of all kinds when they buy their cars, every single day.

But consider this silver lining: The really bad decisions -- the ones that jeopardize your safety and that of your family -- are also easily avoided by doing real research on the contraption that will send your family hurtling down the freeway at 70 mph in close proximity to hundreds of thousands of other vehicles. You can avoid the truly unfortunate and tragic pitfalls of vehicle purchase by recognizing that minivans and cars, by their very designs, are safer overall vehicles for you to use.

Nice post. ES members, this guy knows what he's talking about.

[Larry]

It's a shame that so many Americans have bought into the idea that a stiff, top-heavy, minimally maneuverable lumbering land yacht is safer than a car or minivan designed from the ground up to sacrifice itself for its driver's health.

This myth has probably been around for far longer than any of us has been alive, judging by the number of people out there who will parrot their local Ford dealer's empty rhetoric without subjecting it to the basic smell test. But it would be nice to see the public come to their collective senses and recognize it for the sham argument it is.

Or who, perhaps, base their opinions on personal experiance.

Y'know, the ones who get ignored on the way to simply posting some more loaded rhetoric.

Now, far be it from me to recommend that every American make a point of researching well-supported statistics in order to, say, improve little Timmy's chances of surviving a crash.

In fact, far be it from you for you to even supply any such statistics.

You state (without support) that half of all accidents involve stationary objects.

Funny. I'd bet that if you count minor parking-lot scrapes, I've been in 20 accidents. If you restrict it to ones that did more than a few hundred dollars damage, it's likely been 5-6. One of them involved a non-vehicle object. (As a teenager, I lost controll of a VW 412 doing about 60 on a country road in then-rural Fairfax county. Car, meet tree.) I guess there must be a lot of people out there who've hit 5-6 bridge abutments, but never a car.

You seem to put a lot of faith in a vehicle's maneuverability to avoid an accident.

1. By that line of reasoning, he should buy a motorcycle. He can avoid death if he dodges enough. Heck, skip the helmet, and buy racing tires.
   
2. And should I point out, again: My last two accidents, (and my co-workers accident) I've been stopped when I was rammed.
   

In 30 years of driving, I've never used, or needed, a maneuver that was so violent that I don't think my "top-heavy" Explorer could duplicate it. I don't think I've ever left skid marks at an accident.

(Granted, a good part of that may be because for 20 years, I've driven like a candidate for membership in the Florida Old Fogey Drivers Club.)

-----

Now, on the assumption that you actually do have some information to back up your rhetoric, and you simply forgot to provide it:

It's entirely possible that there may be some statistical support for your position, but I'd be interested in how much the statistician factored in the fact that different types of vehicles get used differently.

Example: I recently saw a

60 Minutes

piece about 20-passenger vans. Their contention was that the vehicles are rollover hazards, and that if fully loaded, then the potential exists for some really spectacular death tolls.

The piece focused on two incidents in which church vans (or similar vehicles) were struck by large trucks and rolled over. One accident had, IIR, 17 fatalities.

They showed pictures of the van after the accident. What I noticed was that, although the van didn't have a single piece of glass left in it, the roof hadn't collapsed in the rollover. (The roof was roughly the same height was it was before the accident.) (I was rather surprised it looked so intact, after supposedly rolling over three times.)

Which then causes me to observe that I'd be willing to bet that, of the 17 fatalities, none were wearing a seatbelt. I simply have trouble believing that it's possible for that many people to die, in an accident in which there appears to have been no major intrusions into the interior of the vehicle, if they were wearing a seat belt. (I only saw pictures of the exterior. Maybe the seats tore loose. I do understand that trucks and vans are exempt from some safety rules that cars have to meet. Maybe that's one of them.)

And I further observe that one reason why there were 17 fatalities in that van, whereas 17-fatality (from a single vehicle) accidents are rare in other vehicles (And ignoring that they're rare in

this

vehicle, too.

60 Minutes

picked a spectacular case, not a typical one.) is simply because this vehicle

holds

more people than other vehicles.

I wonder if your statistics factored in the fact that, at least in places I've lived, they have laws mandating seatbelt use in cars, but not in trucks or vans.

Do they factor in the fact that, at least in my standard-cab pickup, if I were to carry a child in a car seat, he'd have to ride in the front (and only) seat?