Explorer gets lost
James Stanford
03jun05
The success of the Ford Territory could push its big brother out of the country.
Plunging sales have forced Ford Australia to review the future of the Explorer four-wheel-drive, which has struggled since the Territory was introduced close to a year ago.
Ford has sold a monthly average of only 41 Explorers this year, down from 101 a month in the same period last year.
"We will be in the position to take a decision on that in the next two to three months," Ford Australia president Tom Gorman says.
"We have to work out if there is a place for it."
The Explorer is by far the worst-performing stand-alone vehicle in the Ford line-up. It is outsold by the F-Series trucks and lesser known models such as the Econovan.
The American-imported Explorer replaced the Maverick, which was effectively a rebadged Nissan Patrol, in 1996 and enjoyed early success.
Ford sold 3823 Explorers in 1997 and 3503 in 1998 before sales dropped off from 1999 to 2003. They took a further hit when Territory arrived last year.
Ford Australia felt the two models could work side by side. The idea was that the smaller four-cylinder and V6 Escape, the six-cylinder Territory, and the V6 and V8 Explorers gave dealers a full suite of crossover wagons.
"At the time we had a four (cylinder), six, eight strategy, which seemed to make sense," Gorman says.
The base model V6 Explorer XLT costs $53,480, and the V8 Limited model costs $63,950.
The Territory range goes from the rear-wheel-drive TX at $38,990 to the all-wheel-drive Ghia at $53,950.
Herald Sun
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