For me, the experience was tolerable because I had a good dealer service department, Sheehy Ford in Gaithersburg. No matter how catastrophic the failure they always came through to make it a better experience despite Ford never having a permanent fix for some things like the camera issue. So a careless dealer could make this a miserable situation for sure!
It wasn’t my dealer most of the time. It was a first year design. Ford never trained their techs to work on these vehicles. My dealer is a small family owned company. Great people that are loved by the community.
Onboard computers with all this tech, especially hybrids were a new adventure. The F150 in itself, is a great truck. But add all this tech crap made a terrible entrance into the world. It was almost as if they expected the new owners to be their test subjects. They released these ‘21s in 2 builds. Mine was the first build of its kind. I should know better never to buy the first of anything. But test driving it put me in love. It was like driving a vehicle intended to be a truck but the ride of a luxury vehicle. Best of both worlds. Complete with a 7.2kw generator onboard.
So, you’d THINK it wouldn’t be such a pain the ass!
So lets look at the Explorer, (originally nic-named the Exploder)… Its probably the most common suv on the road. Around here, every LEO dept uses them. FD, etc. Fleet services use them. Where I am, you see pickups or Suvs for the most part.
So with sooooo many Explorers on the road, how can Ford mess up?
This camera issue was not just the Explorers. My 21 F150 I mentioned had same prob. Eventually a software update fixed it. From what I understand, these vehicles with 360 cameras, the rear cam is the only prob. Supposedly, out of all the cams, the rear cam is analog as the others are digital.
Ford has a bad habit of leaving problems fester for years in which a lot are never fixed. Damn shame considering they are suppose to be the best p/u on the road.
I think what the consumer has to look at are other brands better? Chevy? Dodge? Foreign models are starting to infiltrate more and more.
Most people would never know the diff and just drive them. But folks like us into tech and such are more into our vehicle’s. So we notice things more.
My neighbor has a older Nissan p/u with over 120k miles on it. Loves it. Has reg maint done on it and it just keeps running like a top.
Wasn’t that the way Fords were years ago? Run them into the ground? The bodies rot out before the engines died?
And some bring up cost. My F150 was $76k. New ones similar are $80k plus.
Base Explorer ST start around $50. Mine was over $62k sticker. But that should not matter.
It should run as it should with consumers not having to worry.
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