GTP Cool Wall: 2000-2005 Ford Excursion

[JMoney]

What does that even mean?

Have you seen the commercial for the new Chevy Colorado where people are shown two pictures of the same man, one of him with a Colorado and the other with a Corolla? That's what I mean. No, driving a particular car doesn't actually make someone more or less manly, but it does affect that person's image.

That is exactly how we are all thinking about it already. Thanks for the hot tip.

Oh really? You want to cite that statement with the poll data at the top of the page? Looks like 50% voted SU, not all.

I'm going to need you to connect those dots for me.

The Mustang is a normal, common sports car. The Ford GT is an extreme, rarer sports car. The Explorer is a normal, common SUV (at the time of the Excursion's production). The Excursion is an extreme, rarer SUV. So the Mustang is to the GT as the Explorer is to the Excursion.

 

[SlipZtrEm]

Thing is, though, it is lazy engineering to go for displacement rather than intelligence, and that is poor engineering.

Displacement can be intelligence: the 'Vette's engine is a product of impressive evolution on par with the Porsche's work on the 911's engine the past 15 years. As much as I can't stand the Excursion (hence the SU vote), I completely understand why Ford - and the people that bought Excursions - would want the engines installed in this versus more expensive, harder-to-work-on, higher-tech small displacement engines.

Do they hand out little pamphlets on stereotypical anti-American automobile attitudes in Europe once planes land or something?

 

[Zenith]

My argument for displacement is a simple comparison between the V8 in a Camaro and the V8 in an E90 M3.

6.2L vs. 4.0L and the mass produced, redneck Camaro engine is:

More powerful
Smaller
Lighter
Cheaper
More fuel efficient

Lazy? Or better?

 

[ImmalovemaGTR]

Just a standard American Truck, which is heavy and slow.
On the plus side it looks comfortable and has more than enough space.

The fact that there are versions with a 7.3 TD
raises the car from 'Uncool' to 'Meh'.

However, I would prefer a Dodge RAM Cummins TD

 

[Gotbeefboy564]

Who doesn't want one of these.

 

[Legro]

Who doesn't want one of these.

99% of people in Europe.

 

[Bo]

Who doesn't want one of these.

People with an ounce of automotive taste.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Displacement can be intelligence: the 'Vette's engine is a product of impressive evolution on par with the Porsche's work on the 911's engine the past 15 years. As much as I can't stand the Excursion (hence the SU vote), I completely understand why Ford - and the people that bought Excursions - would want the engines installed in this versus more expensive, harder-to-work-on, higher-tech small displacement engines.

Do they hand out little pamphlets on stereotypical anti-American automobile attitudes in Europe once planes land or something?

@Beeblebrox237 I too would like to know that last part, since that seems to be my attitude on your comments most times that leads me to butt heads with you.
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My SU vote is based on having to park next to these and how many of them get lifted and thus make it even more difficult to navigate around for the rest of us driving normal vehicles. And I've only once seen these used for the inteded purpose of having a fully loaded group of people. Other times it's just a hauler (why not get a truck but that's naive of me) or a big vehicle to show off in a less gaudy way then say a Navigator or Escalade.

 

[Beeblebrox237]

Do they hand out little pamphlets on stereotypical anti-American automobile attitudes in Europe once planes land or something?

No, they do it in engineering school. I think like an engineer. I like things to be well designed, efficient, and fully realised. Half baked pieces of detritus like the Excursion are my worst nightmare. If I ever got asked to design something this incredibly appalling I'd resign. I find it hard to respect anyone who likes this stupid hunk of metal, and even harder to respect the company that decided to make it. And the so called engineers who designed it? I wouldn't trust them to design a screwdriver, let alone a car.

There are cars that get polled which I find very, very uncool. There are very few cars, though, that I genuinely hate. I have a problem with this car's existence. It's idiocy defined.

 

[Zenith]

No, they do it in engineering school. I think like an engineer. I like things to be well designed, efficient, and fully realised. Half baked pieces of detritus like the Excursion are my worst nightmare. If I ever got asked to design something this incredibly appalling I'd resign. I find it hard to respect anyone who likes this stupid hunk of metal, and even harder to respect the company that decided to make it. And the so called engineers who designed it? I wouldn't trust them to design a screwdriver, let alone a car.

That's a lot of name calling and not much point making.

SlipZtrEm and I already pointed out some of the advantages of this lazily designed engine that people routinely throw out your "well designed, efficient, and fully realized" European engines for. You decided to rant about screwdrivers instead of addressing them. C'mon, man. Part of engineering is discussion.

 

[huskeR32]

Have you seen the commercial for the new Chevy Colorado where people are shown two pictures of the same man, one of him with a Colorado and the other with a Corolla? That's what I mean. No, driving a particular car doesn't actually make someone more or less manly, but it does affect that person's image.

I don't believe I have seen that commercial. If I had though, I think my eyes would have rolled so hard, they'd have popped out of my head.

Oh really? You want to cite that statement with the poll data at the top of the page? Looks like 50% voted SU, not all.

I was referring to this:

... but I think of it this way: the Excursion is essentially just a massive SUV.

When I read that, I missed the "I," and read it as a suggestion for us to all to "think of it this way." Hence my snarky reply. Consider it withdrawn.

The Mustang is a normal, common sports car. The Ford GT is an extreme, rarer sports car. The Explorer is a normal, common SUV (at the time of the Excursion's production). The Excursion is an extreme, rarer SUV. So the Mustang is to the GT as the Explorer is to the Excursion.

That's all it takes to be SZ? So then you'd agree that Honda Civic Type R is SZ, because Honda Fit, yes?

Who doesn't want one of these.

Me. I very, very, very much do not want one of those.

 

[Beeblebrox237]

That's a lot of name calling and not much point making.

I've made my point and I stand by it. And I don't feel it needs further support or explanation.

 

[playnthru]

People with an ounce of automotive taste.

99% of people in Europe.

Does. not. compute

 

[JMoney]

That's all it takes to be SZ? So then you'd agree that Honda Civic Type R is SZ, because Honda Fit, yes?

Not necessarily, but I would say that the Civic Type-R is cooler than a Fit. There are other factors that make the Civic less cool in my opinion.

 

[GTP_Ingram]

Do they hand out little pamphlets on stereotypical anti-American automobile attitudes in Europe once planes land or something?

No, but It does seem like some Americans are given something similar encouraging them to blindly stand up for whatever car their country produces, regardless of whether it is hideous or not (this isn't an accusation that I'm aiming at you SlipZtrEm, by the way.)

Maybe I'm just cynical, but if I see a crap British car, it doesn't matter that it's made here, I'll still think it's crap. I don't see the same attitude from several American members here when it comes to cars from their own country. Let's be honest, would anyone who voted the Excursion sub zero (all American) or cool have said the same if it had been designed, engineered and built in China?

Maybe I should be envious that I don't have the same sense of national pride. On the other hand, maybe I should just be pleased that I can look at something from a slightly less partisan point of view, and like (or dislike) a car, regardless of what country it was made in.

 

[Roger the Horse]

@GTP_Ingram, that doesn't sound like a cynical outlook at all.

 

[Joel]

The thing's 15 years old, and the engine was first used 20 years ago in 1994! A lot's changed in diesel engines over that time, the 6.0L replaced it in 2003 with what you called reasonable figures, and the current model Super Duty has a 6.7L diesel with 440hp, and 860lb/ft of torque. I just have a hard time seeing a truck engine that with gobs of torque that can tow farm equipment and horse trailers, and was released before eBay existed as lazily engineered.

I've made my point and I stand by it. And I don't feel it needs further support or explanation.

An important part of engineering is to be able to communicate the rationale behind your choices to the layman, or to the executive with a cursory knowledge of the subject who's going to pay for your work. If we're going for the stereotypes about our studies, I'm an accounting major. As an engineer you'll have to convince someone like me that's it worth it to scrap an engine that's functional for our product and easily sourced, so that we can spend millions designing a new engine. I don't care how fully realized this new engine is when I have to explain to the CFO that R&D and production went over budget and our gross margin is down by 8% on the 50,000 Excursions and god knows how many Super Duty trucks we sold.

Try telling your VP Sales that you want to scrap a 7.3L engine in your big truck for a 4L twin turbo, and that it's his job to convince dealers they can tell Joe Sixpack that the new 4L engine is actually better than the big engines your competitors are offering in their trucks. See how thrilled the service manager is that he'll get to listen to upset dealership owners who have customers coming in angry that their new truck costs more to service than their buddy's Suburban. There's far more to selling cars than performance.

You'll also have to work with marketing types. I'm sure Porsche engineers found the Cayenne frustrating, here they had a request to design a sporty and high performance vehicle that sits high off the ground and weighs a ton. The things will never go offroad, so surely they could just lower them and have a faster, better handling, lighter, and more efficient vehicle without cutting interior space, right? Except now the VP Marketing is pissed because they asked you to design an SUV and you're showing them a render of a wagon.

would anyone who voted the Excursion sub zero (all American) or cool have said the same if it had been designed, engineered and built in China?

Probably not. Does that matter? In a lot of these threads European members vote 4 cylinder hatchbacks with a Renault or Citroen badge cool, would they do that if it was a Chevrolet, Nissan, or Skoda badge? Probably not. This happens in all kinds of industries, "German engineering", "Belgian chocolate", "French wine", "Italian coffee", hell even British humour and rock bands. It's neither a surprise nor a bad thing that Americans like a huge truck that's only popular in America built by an American company to serve American tastes.

but if I see a crap British car, it doesn't matter that it's made here, I'll still think it's crap.

Is the Ford Excursion uncool? Hopelessly so. Does that mean it was a terrible piece of garbage made by lazy engineers? No. This isn't a dinky crossover, it's a real SUV that weighs 9000 7700 pounds. It can do real work, real truck stuff, seat 8 people, and tow a boat on the highway. It's a large SUV, and it's very good at being a large SUV, is an old Fiat 500 crap because it can't tow a boat? Of course not.

You have to understand how frustrating it is if you know about trucks to see people call this thing crap because a BMW x5 that weighs ~half as much gets better hp/L. If you're familiar with computers it's like criticizing an Nvidia Quadro workstation GPU for having bad gaming performance, it's just completely irrelevant to what it was built for. An engine designed for a heavy duty truck starting at $40,000 that has to tow boats, horse trailers, and construction/farm equipment isn't crap or lazy engineering because BMW gets more power out of engines in crossovers that cost twice as much with half the weight and aren't built for commercial use.

I think this video from 6:46 on is very relevant.

 

[Sage Ages]

You cannot compare this to an X5 by any means.

 

[MatskiMonk]

My opinion on American engineering.

When 'gas' is dirt cheap you don't bother refining your engines
When there's masses of space you don't bother worrying about integrating clever packaging
When your road network seems to contain masses of straight lines and 90° corners, you don't worry too much about handling
When you can rely totally on domestic sales and still sell umpteen million cars you don't bother catering to wider tastes

... I'm not saying they haven't turned out plenty of good cars, but normally they've only been good because they look good - far too many American cars don't even have that going for them. It seems only recently that the U.S. has started churning out cars that even Europeans consider to be good competition, but even then, most American cars aren't sold over here, so most people's opinions are unlikely to change.

 

[Tornado]

And I don't feel it needs further support or explanation.

You never actually did anything to support it or explain it. No one in this thread has actually done so, nevermind anything about how what was essentially a Ford Super Duty SUV was automatically a "half baked piece of detritus"; so at some point someone has to actually step up and explain why it was bad in a context other than because soccer moms lusted after them so they could be used for mall runs.




Where are the engineering deficiencies? What about its design is so appalling? Specifically, please; and not related to the atrocious 6.0 diesel they ended up saddled with since even the most ardent of Ford fans will happily throw it under the bus for that. You'll have no argument from me that the Excursion is an obscenely uncool vehicle, but if people are going to throw around how bad they were there needs to be a bit more justification for that than because BMW makes a diesel engine with more horsepower that would probably explode if installed in this, or the engine designed for commercial use doesn't meet whatever arbitrary hp/l measurement it needs to to be considered "acceptable" like the one that blew up all the time does.

If anyone is willing to explain what about it is so bad, perhaps a discussion can occur where both sides learn something, like when hsv implied that it sat so high because of off road ability and I pointed out that it sat so high because the humongous frame made it do so; or where you talked about how the 6.0 liter was the superior engine because of its higher specific output before being told anyone who has ever owned one would much rather have the supposedly inferior 7.3.

 

[Dennisch]

The TD version of this behemoth weighs, according to Wikipedia, 3504KG. Which means that in the Netherlands you'll need a truck license to drive it.

 

[Sage Ages]

Oh, and the 6.0l diesel makes 325bhp/560lb ft... BMW's top diesel makes 376bhp/550lb ft in twin turbo form... from half the capacity

Unless you're talking about a newer engine, I can't find anything to support this claim. If it is, then this isn't exactly a fair comparison.

 

[synchromesh]

Cool, I think it's a badass truck.

 

[Dennisch]

Unless you're talking about a newer engine, I can't find anything to support this claim. If it is, then this isn't exactly a fair comparison.

I think he's talking about the M550D engine.

Totally moot though.

 

[Sage Ages]

I think he's talking about the M550D engine.

2012–present

Yeah....no, that's not fair at all.

 

[Dennisch]

Yeah....no, that's not fair at all.

And besides that, that BMW engine makes that power, and it can probably tow a lot of weight, but newer diesels aren't actually the reliable workhorses they used to be. Over time it will be back but for now, meh.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

I gave it a cool on account of there being literally nothing left of its previous stigma.

A 2015 F150 crew cab with the baby box is longer, taller, and wider with no appreciable gain in flexibility and considerably less people-hauling capability.

Basically, when "half ton" trucks have outgrown usefulness, suddenly vehicles previously believed to be giant are suddenly useful-sized and practical.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

No, they do it in engineering school. I think like an engineer. I like things to be well designed, efficient, and fully realised. Half baked pieces of detritus like the Excursion are my worst nightmare. If I ever got asked to design something this incredibly appalling I'd resign. I find it hard to respect anyone who likes this stupid hunk of metal, and even harder to respect the company that decided to make it. And the so called engineers who designed it? I wouldn't trust them to design a screwdriver, let alone a car.

There are cars that get polled which I find very, very uncool. There are very few cars, though, that I genuinely hate. I have a problem with this car's existence. It's idiocy defined.

Funny thing is you're not the only one in engineering school and the other funny thing is you're the only one I know that has a bias. I too think like an engineer cause I too am in that field and an engineer doesn't stick to one biased (obvious) preference. What was described by @Zenith and @SlipZtrEm is an effort by others to formulate their method with a different angle and doing it for less and getting the same thing or more. Your hang up is displacement which is as bad as the other end of those arguing "more displacement is better".

AS for your scathing review of those who were given the task of engineering this, do you even know what the hell you're talking about? Because it's quite dense to think that somehow the engineering world is so linear that the politics of an executive board don't have some heavy say in what is going to be made. What is idiocy defined is the Lyons LM2, this actually has some purpose and backing behind it. Your problem seems to be of a culture and way of life not engineering.

 

[Leggy1]

My opinion on American engineering.

When 'gas' is dirt cheap you don't bother refining your engines
When there's masses of space you don't bother worrying about integrating clever packaging
When your road network seems to contain masses of straight lines and 90° corners, you don't worry too much about handling
When you can rely totally on domestic sales and still sell umpteen million cars you don't bother catering to wider tastes

... I'm not saying they haven't turned out plenty of good cars, but normally they've only been good because they look good - far too many American cars don't even have that going for them. It seems only recently that the U.S. has started churning out cars that even Europeans consider to be good competition, but even then, most American cars aren't sold over here, so most people's opinions are unlikely to change.

Hit the nail on the head.

 

[JMoney]

99% of people in Europe.

This is a sensible, mildly realistic answer to @Gotbeefboy564's question.

People with an ounce of automotive taste.

This is a baseless, condescending, blatantly Anti-American response to @Gotbeefboy564's question.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but if I see a crap British car, it doesn't matter that it's made here, I'll still think it's crap. I don't see the same attitude from several American members here when it comes to cars from their own country. Let's be honest, would anyone who voted the Excursion sub zero (all American) or cool have said the same if it had been designed, engineered and built in China?

No, because it wouldn't have been made by Ford and would have lost all credibility. Plus, it probably wouldn't have been sold in the U.S, and in China an Excursion would be helplessly impractical on smaller roads (assuming China's roads are the same width as Europe's). Cars from China are known to be made very cheaply and are often knockoffs of other brands, so until a Chinese car company emerges that isn't cheap or makes knockoffs, pretty much all Chinese cars are uncool.

Half baked pieces of detritus like the Excursion are my worst nightmare.

Really? Your worst nightmare? Good thing you live in Britain where they don't have these.

If I ever got asked to design something this incredibly appalling I'd resign.

I seriously doubt you'll ever be asked to design something appalling.

I find it hard to respect anyone who likes this stupid hunk of metal,

Really? 'Cause I find it hard to respect anyone who won't respect a person just because they like a particular car.

and even harder to respect the company that decided to make it.

You mean the same American company that designs small cars specifically for UK and European markets?

There are very few cars, though, that I genuinely hate. I have a problem with this car's existence. It's idiocy defined.

You aren't even affected by this car! You live across an ocean from it! The worst thing that this car will do to you is block your sightline at an intersection, and that's only if you are driving a short car in America and one happens to appear next to you, which is highly unlikely considering how many sold. Oh yeah, and I guess it'll kill your atmosphere as well, like all large American vehicles do.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]