DeluxeStang

While I enjoy discussing this, this will probably be the last time I mention it, just so we don't get too off topic. But my family has had a truly terrible experience with Hondas. The difference between our Ford's and Hondas has, and I'm not being hyperbolic, is cars lasting over a decade with little issues, compared to a car that couldn't even last two days before the engine destroying itself. One of my closest friends has a newer civic, around 2013, and it's genuinely having more issues and is in far worse condition than most of the Ford's my family owns from the 90s and early 2000s. It's one of those cars where everything, literally everything, is failing on it, and it only has about 80k miles on it. His brother has basically an identical civic, and it's a similar story there. But my point in, I always hear how terrible Ford's are, how bad their quality is, how unreliable they are. Yet most of the real world Ford owners I talk to love their cars, and aren't experiencing any issues. You see more old Ford's still running and driving than you do for just about any other brand, and they have one of the highest owner loyalty levels in the industry. It seems to be Ford's are a lot better built than people give them credit. Ford issues a lot of recalls, but so many of them are minor, trivial things that other brands just ignore.

Are we talking about perception of reliability, or real world objectivity? Because if it's the later, Ford and Toyota see a lot closer in terms of reliability than most people think. Just look at their trucks, all of Ford's trucks rank higher than Toyotas. The f-150 is more reliable than the newer Tundras, the ranger and maverick rank higher in terms of reliability than the Tacoma. The bronco sport and escape seem to be about on par with the rav 4. The fusion when it was being made was an exceptionally reliable sedan. I'd wager the mustang is probably more reliable than Toyotas BMW based supra. People love Toyota because of what they were 40 years ago, people hate Ford because of what they were 40 years ago.

1. As I've discussed at several points in the past, passion and excitement in a vehicle looks different depending who you're talking to. I'm a massive car enthusiast, to me, Ford's best passion products are things like the mustang, the gt, the raptor R. But if you're a business owner, and Ford comes out with a new electric transit that focuses on having lower ownership costs than the gas transit, and comes with pro power on-board so you can use it to run pieces of equipment your business needs. Well then that transit becomes more of a passion product than what came before, because it's a better tool to help you better your business. Passion isn't the same for everyone. The issue is A to B appliances aren't products of passion, they're products of tolerance. Someone who loves their mustang, or ranger, will keep it, and enjoy it, even if they have to fix a few small things here and there. People who just want a transportation appliance will drop it at the first sign of trouble. They aren't particularly loyal, and they often aren't profitable to appeal to. Ford is smart to get away from that crowd. You can make a reliable, and affordable passion product, the maverick is all three, so is the bronco sport. 2. Are you for real? Most aspirational brands are European, and essentially each of those brands has far worse quality and reliability than Ford's products do. I've literally never met a single person who knows about the reputation of brands, and says "Wow, I wish Ford had the same level of reliability as BMW and range Rover". Ford's cars are a lot like Toyotas cars as far as I'm concerned. Lots of plastic in the interiors, not super high end feeling. But the greasy bits basically last forever. Ford gives you a luxury that virtually no European brand can match, peace of mind. These are a lot of buyers willing to pay a premium for that.

The important thing is to try to create change, not just for the sake of change. But to think of changes that could genuinely improve a product, and make someone's life better. Tying that back into Ford's vehicles, and the explorer, their updated inferences have the potential to do that. So while on the surface, these new changes might throw some people off. But once they start interacting with the vehicle, I think they'll learn to love it.

Well here's the thing, the f-series, maverick, bronco, and explorer, could all be seen as passion products, and those are all doing quite well. A lot of the passion products Ford has that aren't selling well currently, are the kinds of products where Ford is really onto something special, they just have to make some tweaks and improvements. The mach-e is one such example. Passion product doesn't mean it has to be some 100k supercar, and that's all Ford is gonna sell to people. It means Ford is done with being vanilla. That's not to say there's no money to be made with vanilla, generic products. That's not to say Ford isn't going to care about quality or making affordable products moving forward. They're just saying Ford wants to become the affordable aspirational brand, which is what Ford does best as is. I can't think of a single brand who does as good of a job at making dream cars people can realistically afford. It's smart to lean into what makes your company unique, why waste money trying to be like everyone else?

I hope we still get a second gen mach-e at this point. The issue with the mach-e and the lightning is they were both impressive products initially. But as the years have gone on, and we've seen the arrival of new aspirational EVs from other brands, it becomes pretty clear where Ford took shortcuts to get their EVs out first. When your mustang branded sporty EV is losing to basically everything it races against, it's not a good look, especially when your EV is one of the only ones tied to the heritage of your most famous sports car. Lot of performance limitations with that platform. Fingers crossed a second gen mach-e designed from the beginning to be a performance vehicle won't have those issues.

Fair enough haha, to be honest, I'm in my late 20s. I'd rather spend my time interacting with people in their 50s and 60s like you guys most of the time, they have more interesting things to say than most of the clowns in my age group. I should clarify, I'm referring to the general populous, like my own folks to be honest. They're very old world smart, but anytime I have to explain new tech in a car to them, it freaks them out. My parents generally love our maverick hybrid now that they've adjusted to owning a hybrid, but having to explain things like stop/start cycles, the lack of a starter in the maverick, even small things like the rotary dial, all of that took some getting used to for them. I've generally found that as people get older, and sometimes wiser, they generally want things to stick to what they know.

I highly recommend getting something with an NA motor. Ford's NA motors are rock solid reliable for the most part, it sounds like Ecoboost just isn't working out for your specific needs.

Ford deserves a lot of credit here. With our currently automotive landscape being all doom and gloom about cars becoming unobtainable, Ford's managing to bring their prices down on several of their iconic products while vastly improving them. Bravo to the team who worked on this.

It's more distinct, and upscale looking all around for sure. I love a well design touchscreen interface. I think what annoys people, is having even basic functions relevant to a touchscreen. It comes naturally to my generation, people in their 40s and above, less so. Unless it's laggy, or otherwise poorly implemented, it doesn't bother me. I predict this is going to become one of those none issue things as millennials and gen z gradually make their way into explorer and other utilities.

It's give and take I suppose. I like how they ditched that odd design element where the headlights extended into the grille area for no reason. The new grille is imposing, and muscular looking. But from some angles, it looks a bit blobish.

Fair enough, car design is a difficult balance of trying to create something unique, without going too far. Where that limit lies differs from person to person.

I actually like that about it. It gives the rear end even more of a muscular look imo. The pre-facelifted version was far too plain looking, especially the rear. This looks much more upscale and sporty to me.

It's really not a big deal. Let's just get back on topic. Sorry for making you feel singled out, that wasn't my intention. Let's just stick to discussing the edge, and it's potential replacements. But let's refrain from having broader discussions about EVs as a whole, or the downsides to electrification on this forum.

I know, but this is how things start to spiral out of control. A discussion on the edge turns into a discussion on the 7 seater replacing the edge, which in turn turns into some broader discussion on EVs. Before you know it, everyone is running around screaming their political and societal views at each other. Let's not let it get that far ?.I'm guilty of this myself, but I'm trying to be more mindful of it moving forward.

Guys, let's please not turn this into another discussion on the shortcomings of EVs, there are other threads for that.

That's good to see BOF has improved in recent years. Perhaps I need to revisit the idea of owning a BOF vehicle in the future in that case. On the topic of interiors, I don't dare insult the bronco's interior, my maverick is all plastic after all ?. Edit:I don't know why me quoting someone else who was quoting me is only showing my portion of the post, by I'm just gonna leave it haha.

Yeah, it looks like it will take a lot of inspiration from the Chinese explorer, a much needed improvement ?

Perhaps because it's BOF, and has that more rugged look, Ford could rebrand it as a slightly more upscale extension of the bronco brand or something? Offering a new product that appeals to some edge buyers, but also the bronco buyers who want a more upscale bronco with an enclosed roof. I will be honest, I see the Everest appealing to bronco and explorer owners more than edge owners. If they didn't want to brand it as a bronco, perhaps they could call it explorer classic or something to call back to the explorers more rugged roots. It sounds like these edge buyers are particularly picky, so selling them on the rather unrefined nature of a BOF truck would be an uphill battle. At this point, edge buyers are reminding me of that cat waiting at the door saying. They don't know what they want anymore.

Is it possible for Ford to bring the evos here? I know initially, they said they didn't have plans to. But it's been well received, it's c2 based so it can use many of those components, it has sportier and more aggressive styling than the edge that would appeal to American consumers more than the current edge does. Seems like it would go over well here. Ford already has multiple midsized two row passion oriented utilities in the form of the bronco, and mach-e. The challenge as I see it, is Ford doesn't want to make boring appliances anymore, but the bronco and the mach-e don't appeal to a lot of the edge owners I've talked to for a variety of reasons. So Ford doesn't want to keep producing the edge as is, but their more exciting offerings in the two row space aren't really appealing to edge owners either. An evos design with the maverick hybrid system could be something that captivates edge buyers without cannibalizing bronco and mach-e sales, but Ford seems opposed to bringing the evos here.

The aviator EV is the Ford based Lincoln three row from my understanding. Edit: But guys, we are getting a bit off topic here. Let's stay focused on the edge, and perhaps what Ford could produce at Oakville once the edge is finished. I'm seeing comments on Cadillac, and other brands, let's just stay on topic please.

While a c2 hybrid Edge would be a desirable product in my mind, that sounds too much like the commodity, in Farley's own words "Boring" vehicles that Ford is trying to do away with. I have a hard time seeing how a new edge could align with Ford's new strategy of selling passion products. But at the same time, it's sold well enough that walking away from that segment entirely seems foolish to me. Personally, I think Ford should expand the explorer sub-brand with a two row explorer offering. Something that offers similar pricing and market positioning to the previous edge, but has that boxier styling buyers love, and a more iconic name.

So I suppose that rules out Ford revealing some sort of concept or something in April. You would think with edge production ending, they'd want to tease future product to keep interest and confidence in the plant alive. But if it's not coming until early 2025, I doubt we'll see anything that early on.

You seem to think I'm saying that 5.0 hybrid is something Ford should put in explorers and transits, it's not. I'm saying a 5.0 AWD hybrid would be a solid choice for a future mustang, as well as a few high performance f-150 variants, such as a next gen raptor perhaps. 2 out of the 3 powertrains I discussed aren't even performance oriented, so I don't see where you're getting this idea that I wanting all future hybrids to be performance monsters.

So let's deconstruct this bit by bit. You want Ford to replace the 2.5 with a new 2.3 design, but why? Any fuel efficiency, and power gains are purely hypothetical. The 2.5 is a golden powertrain, it's old, that's why I bought a maverick with that powertrain, because it's old, because it's an extremely proven and reliable design, definitely one of Ford's most reliable powertrains currently. That's a selling point, not something detrimental. It's very reliable, about as fuel efficient as you can get, and fast as hell for what it is. It's one of the few examples of a powertrain where there really isn't much you could improve about it. So again, why would you want to replace it? The same goes for your other proposals, you want Ford to make 6 and 8 cyl hybrids, but you don't want them to use their existing 3.5 and 5.0. The 3.5 powerboost is stellar, and a perfect option for a future expedition and transit hybrid. Again, I'm trying to be respectful, but I don't understand where your head is at wanting Ford to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop new engines that will probably be worse that what they already have. The 5.0 is one of the best performance engines in the market. There's no reason or need to develop a new V8 when the 5.0 does basically everything well. If it works, why get rid of it? Also, you say modern buyers don't care about having powerful engines, once more, I respectfully disagree. Modern cars sell almost entirely on wants, over needs. No-one needs a 760 hp gt500, very few people need a super duty that can pull 30,000 lbs up a steep hill. No-one needs a raptor or bronco that can go rock crawling. But people like knowing they own vehicles that can do these things.