Saturday 12/16 Boston Globe article on 2001 Ford Explorer:
AUTOMOBILIA
Ford lightens up on Explorer, for safety's sake
By Royal Ford, Globe Columnist , 12/16/2000
Mix immutable laws of physics with bad behavior, shake, rattle, and stir, and you've got an unstable, dangerous concoction.
That's my recipe, and I like to apply it to Sport Utility Vehicles.
Produce a heavy vehicle, put much of its weight above the axles, giving it a high center of gravity, settle it on a rigid ladder frame, and equip it with leaf springs that flex greatly so that unsprung weight can be violently released. Now, give that vehicle to drivers, far too many of whom will drive it very fast and push it through sharp corners and sudden lane changes.
The result: SUVs tip over far more easily and regularly than other automobiles.
When Ford introduced the Explorer, the world's most popular SUV, in 1990, it ran afoul of this rule. Trying to combine ruggedness, room, and creature comfort, they plopped a luxurious cabin atop a truck frame. Unfortunately, many yahoos were among the 3.5 million folks who have bought Explorers since.
Ford was not alone, and virtually every SUV built in a similar way has the same faults. Now, with SUV safety under continued question and the Explorer in the harshest light because of the Ford-Firestone tire debacle, Ford has introduced a new Explorer - one whose design acknowledges the faults of the past.
How was it done? From the ground up, according to David Rogers, a Ford engineer specializing in vehicle dynamics.
Ground up means starting with the vehicle's stance. Its track is 21/2 inches wider than in the past. Its wheelbase is 2 inches longer. This means more stability.
The rear end has been altered, with independent rear suspension. This means the frame at the rear no longer has to curl up and over (carrying weight with it) a bouncing rear differential and axle. Instead, this rear end is fixed, sits lower, and its axles feed from differential to wheels through ''portholes'' cut in the frame. The old bounce of leaf springs and rear end in unstable situations is gone.
Front and rear suspensions now include coil springs over shocks. Control arms steady the give and take of greater wheel travel.
Adding to the new Explorer's stability is that it is filled with lightweight materials - aluminum suspension components, aluminum automatic transmission, aluminum body parts, plastic intake manifolds, magnesium transfer case. A lighter car riding high is a far less tippy car.
Safety concerns about SUVs have focused a great deal on what happens to the occupants of smaller cars involved in collisions with the bigger rigs. But there have been concerns as well - mostly over side-impact crashes and rollovers - for the safety of those in these supposedly indestructible beasts.
For those inside, Ford has added impact rails to the doors; air bags surround front- and second-seat passengers.
Sensors detect the size of the people sitting in the front seats and, in the driver's case, how close they are sitting to the steering wheel. Air bags are deployed, then, with appropriate degrees of power. The sensors even monitor the severity of the crash to adjust deployment energy.
Of particular note are side curtain air bags that drop from the headliner when a sensor detects that the car has tipped too far and is about to roll over. These drop down and stay inflated for several seconds, cushioning the passengers' heads, but also helping to prevent anyone from being ejected through a window.
A sensor system monitors yaw, traction, and steering wheel input to determine if trouble is developing. It then employs traction control, the ABS, and the throttle to control the Explorer.
When crashes do happen, particularly frontal crashes, SUVs have often, because of their height, ridden up and into or over smaller cars and their rigid frames have demolished them. They like to call this, in the industry, a compatibility issue.
So let's just say Ford has made the Explorer more compatible.
The front frame rails have been lowered by 2 inches. Its front bumper now sits at about the same height as a Taurus. In addition, holes have been drilled into the front frame rails so they will crumple in a front-end crash - ''eating up energy'' as Stephanie Sweeney, Ford vehicle crash safety supervisor put it - and protect both the Explorer's occupants and those in other cars.
Love 'em or hate 'em, SUVs are not going away. But the new Explorer, far removed from the elegant box on a truck that was introduced in 1990, is one example of how they can become more compatible.
Royal Ford's e-mail address is
ford@globe.com.
Hopefully this is a start to more safer SUVs. Since SUVs aren't niche vehicles anymore and are driven like passenger cars they should be subject to the same rules and regulations. Mini-vans went through the same thing several years ago. They used to be classified as trucks but now are subject as cars and are required to have bumpers that match car bumpers. Its BS that they shouldn't be subject to the same regulations. They should be made safer not just for the occupants but for the people who might get into accidents with them. I was watching the news last night and there was a story on a highway around here (the Taconic highway) and how dangerous it is. They showed an accident last week which killed a really attractive 18 yr old girl who was broadsided in her Acura Legend by a Grand Cherokee. I have no doubt that if the Cherokee's bumper had been lower and not at shoulder height she might have survived the accident.