tbone

Based on what I’m seeing, it is likely the GPF that is causing it the power drop. Do you know what to look for underneath, as I don’t? Btw, you weren’t too harsh. It’s ok to have an opinion about the situation.

I’m not sure what you are trying to insinuate, but I don’t like people to speak for me, so unless I missed something in another thread, this is actually what I said: “Sorry, throwing some 24’s, a new grill, and interior on the Expedition isn’t going to move the needle in this segment. Im a firm believer that all sheet metal has to change to get people’s attention. This situation strikes me as the potential for another Fusion moment as others have mentioned. Hopefully these are just test models, and are not indicative of what is to come. It’s a failure with me, a potential buyer who buys two new vehicles approximately every three years. I will not consider it if it does not look completely new. We will be way past the mid cycle refresh date at that point. 
 Will they sell them, of course, but I don’t believe they will challenge the market leader. They won’t continue to build off the successful relaunch of the Expedition, IMO. If they are content with the status quo sales wise, I suppose you could say that is a success for them. Im just not sure why you want to follow the likes of the Armada/QX market participants instead of the market leaders. 
 If I recall correctly, you and I have debated this subject matter as related to the Fusion, so it is likely we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. It’s hard to feel optimistic about the 2025 Expedition and perhaps the Navigator. The fact that this is referred to as a refresh in this article is disturbing, however not terribly surprising considering it’s pretty evident that there’s a lot of carryover sheet-metal, in particular on the sides of the vehicle. I want to give it the benefit of the doubt, but a heavily revised interior would not be sufficient to get me to buy a new Expy, when it originally debuted in 2018. It would have to be joined by substantial exterior changes.” You can interpret that as me saying it would be a flop if you want, but that isn’t what I said. I do want Ford to succeed, including the Expedition, but Im also not an apologist that accepts everything they do as gold. I would be shocked if you had nothing to say if Porsche detuned your Boxter prior to your purchase and didn’t advise you as such. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on at this point. Perhaps this power change started after my build date. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to want to know what you purchased.

Can I tell the difference between 385 and 400 by the seat of the pants, probably not, but that really isn’t the point. I can’t find any information in the order guide and the dealer didn’t know anything about the power change. I’ve shown examples of the information Ford was providing at the time of the purchase. Would I still have bought the vehicle, I personally would not have, but my wife bought the vehicle so I can’t speak for her. This is not the only reason I wouldn’t have bought it, I just believe they decontented it too much to justify the purchase and I wouldn’t recommend it to others unless they could get an amazing deal on it. I am going to email Ford customer service to ask them if they can tell me how to determine what my power rating is. Mostly out of curiosity at this point. I don’t know if you recall the 99 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra lawsuit regarding the power rating not being what was stated on their documentation. It does seem there are many in the forums that were not aware of this change. I mention this for the sake of discussion.

I’m not sure how I feel about it, more specifically the fastback. I definitely don’t hate it, but I like the current one, though a little long in the tooth. I’ll need to see some more pics to pass final judgment.

That may be, but on December 19, 2025, their website said 400hp. I got a copy of our window sticker on January 06, 2026. They were still claiming 400hp on their website as of February 10, 2026. Their current Build and Price says 400hp. It is unclear to me what our power rating is, but I believed it was 400hp at the time of purchase based on the info I had available to me at that time.

I picked this nice nugget up from my ST Facebook page and figured it was appropriate for this page. The 2026 Explorer ST has been detuned to 385hp. This was unbeknownst to me at the time of our purchase. I could not find any reference to this prior to purchase and many web sites are still referencing 400hp. The 2025 model is still referencing 400hp on the Ford website. I find it problematic unless they started this spec after ours was produced.

I’ve bought four Raptors and a BRaptor and never paid over MSRP. I know others that have done the same, so it isn’t really that bold of a claim. Some dealers like repeat customers and don’t screw everyone.

Ultimately, that only benefits Ford. Not every dealer is a parasite. Some have integrity and appreciate their customers by charging MSRP or less on specialty vehicles. Assuming you are correct, now everyone gets the “ADM”.

My thoughts on this exactly. I’ll wait to pass final judgment once all the details are available, but the pricing just doesn’t seem reasonable. Nothing against the dark horse name, but it doesn’t have the history behind it to try to push prices up, IMO.

Haha, interesting analogy. I actually liked the side profile of the gray one as a starting point but I didn’t build it out from there. Perhaps I’ll see how that one could evolve.

Yes, I’m aware regarding delivery. I’m thankful I do not to deal with those ridiculous fees with my dealer.

I think this has become a hidden profit center for Ford and is excessive. It certainly didn’t cost $1700 to ship our Explorer that we recently got from Chicago to our dealer. I understand they are average costing it for CONUS, but even privately shipping a vehicle doesn’t cost that much. Another way to lower the MSRP without actually lowering it.

I saw that yesterday. It makes sense for them. It’s not their core market, and it takes a lot to build a vehicle from scratch.

I had some time to kill so I thought I would throw some more concepts out there for discussion. These were done with Grok. I would have like to refine them a little bit more, but when it got down to the finer details, it wasn’t very responsive, or did not interpret my commands the way I would have liked. This last pic was from ChatGPT. It isn’t what I had in mind for this vehicle but I still thought it looked nice and included it anyway.

That is good business as far as I’m concerned. Small things like that make people come back.

I think the bronco already lends itself to having off-road credibility while still having good on road manners, which is why it’s been successful against the jeep. This new Lincoln doesn’t have to have greater capability than the bronco already has in my opinion, so focusing on refinement would be sufficient. As for customers, I think Lincoln needs to take steps to move down into the 40 to 60 range, an average income is good. Their next vehicles need to take great steps to shed that old timer image, even though I don’t think their current lineup suggest that. Something like a G wagon, competitor can help with that, but I also think they need something on the halo vehicle side that isn’t necessarily an SUV. I hate to say it, but getting in bed with major social media influencers could help drive that age down. I personally don’t get it, but young people love them, and they have helped grow various brands from scratch. I really think they need to get aggressive on this. Myself and my wife are probably considered in the old crowd at this point at 52, but I couldn’t get my wife to buy an Aviator because she thinks only old people drive them. Along with trying to rejuvenate the brand, I would like to see a new logo. I don’t find the Lincoln symbol to be very interesting, though this is just a minor quibble. I still have to believe that product is king, and if you build the right thing, everybody will want one. Whatever they come up with, I hope it’s great because this is the first thing to get excited about in a while for me.

I never referenced Toyota or any other brand in my statement, nor do I expect any machine to be perfect, but anytime there is a recall all most people will see is 4.4 million Ford vehicles impacted by a recall and they won’t even read past the headline to see it was only s/w that will be corrected by OTA. When you consider Ford had a record number of recalls last year, the average consumer will likely just think it’s more of the same. My point is, every recall matters whether simple or major, and your quality reputation is getting a death by a thousand cuts. Let’s see how the rest of 2026 goes before passing judgement on their quality improvements. I’m hoping we will see the progress.

A recall is a recall. The vehicle is a system of hardware and software. In the end, the customer is affected, which is all that matters.

I had a fleet Fusion the transmission went out on and it took a dealer two months to fix, because of a parts issue and not enough transmission techs. It didn’t affect me because I just picked up a different vehicle, but imagine if that was a private owner. It was quite ridiculous.

I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t pay that out principal, regardless whether I can afford it or not.

Did you see their last financials? It doesn’t appear they have too much money available.

Oh boy😬

While I applaud efforts to improve the customer service experience, I would say that’s a pretty optimistic goal. There are things they could be doing that will prevent their vehicles from having to be brought in for service In the first place. Bringing more parts manufacturing in house and not beating up suppliers to more effectively control parts quality and more efficient engineering to start with. Seems like engineering is heading that direction hopefully the other will as well.

I am liking what you have going on here. I don’t disagree with you, but I still like the names. But if you want to create something unique and defining, come up with a new name. Ford Authority referenced Navigator Sport today, which is a terrible idea. The two vehicles wouldn’t be comparable in style/type, with respect to the Navigator. They referenced the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, which do share quite a bit of design language, but this scenario will be nothing like that.

This seems consistent with Ford’s pay more, get less mantra, so it is in particularly surprising.