Yup, this will be the year of trim packages....

Retired and moved to Grand Junction, CO in 2015 to enjoy motorcycle touring. Our low mileage 2010 Lincoln MKS purchased new on Kauai (hence low 69K mileage) suffered a bloody nose in a local Safeway parking lot. Even though drivable, insurance totaled it and shortened our rental car benefit to only 7 days🙄. With only one week to find a replacement, purchased a mostly good looking Platinum Dune Pearl 2016 MKX Reserve with 101,370 miles. Very pleased with it after polishing out the "cloudy" headlamps and replacing the TPMS sensors. Our only disappointment is a small oil leak under the front of the engine. May have to live with that as our dealer quoted an incredibly high price to to remedy. Otherwise, performs and handles very nicely with the twin-turbo 2.7 powerplant🤩.  

Thicker cylinder liners, longer connecting rods and most likely heads adapted from the Nano V6s with dual injection.  Not rocket science.   Also note hp and torque in Explorer are unchanged at 300/310.

Supposed to pay homage to the fox body, but not quite sure outside of the plaid seats    I dig it though.    https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKmbf5EJ129/?igsh=cjR2NDl2bnNnZHI5

In fairness we can say the same about Chevy/GM buyers wanting V8s too.

Ford called new 2.3 “all new”.  I don’t know what you consider a tweak, but pretty much everything that matters from block, head, crank, rods, pistons, cams, etc. are new.

Precisely.  It’s a fact that Ford replaced a 2.0L EB with a new 2.0L EB and also replaced a 2.3L EB with a new 2.3L EB based on MPC architecture within last few years.  Ford would not have done this without good reason.  These are facts, not opinions.  A new 6 may not happen at all, but I expect there would be more than “zero reason” for Ford to expand the modular engine design to 6 cylinders, especially since the hard part has already been done.  New engine design is cleaner and more efficient, plus existing V6 families are getting old.  I would personally prefer an I6 over a V6 due to lower cost and smoothness, but setting my personal preferences aside which I can easily do, a new MPC-based V6 engine family “may” also make sense, just like replacing the 2.0 and 2.3 engines did previously.

The MPC upgrades are just tweaks to the existing engines, not all new engines.  V6 ecoboosts already have dual injection and other upgrades and there is no hole in the lineup for a 3.4L to fill.  I’m not saying it wouldn’t yield some improvements but not enough to justify developing an all new engines.  Also remember the I4s are global while the v6s are mostly North America.   The one wild card would be if it allowed consolidation of engine production if volume continues to go down.

Three words sum up the whole sentence:  'Outsource', 'Supplier', and 'China'......

Still, I like the way you think. I wonder if Ford would consider supplying its own engines and platforms to other brands. I can see a future where Ford sells 5.0s and CE1 platforms to brands with lackluster engineering departments. It could be a way for Ford to generate a considerable amount of revenue that goes beyond what it's currently doing.