Ford Will Market New Explorer as SUV
This morning we joined Ford sales analyst George Pipas, global trends communications manager Sheryl Connelly and spokesman Patrick Hespen for breakfast. It didn’t take long for all three to hold court on the market for SUVs and crossovers — and how Ford plans to navigate it. Even though most of the industry has run from the term “SUV” faster than extras in “Godzilla,” Ford is embracing it for the upcoming Explorer.
That’s a bit odd since the next-generation Explorer, set to debut this summer, will fundamentally be a crossover, leaving its truck-based SUV roots behind.
Ford will market the Explorer as a sport utility vehicle rather than a crossover. The very term carries plenty of baggage — even the hip-to-be-square parents of Toyota’s “Swagger Wagon” music video remind us they drive a Sienna SE, “not an SUV” — but Ford will stick to it.
“Customers don’t care” whether something is called a crossover or an SUV, Hespen said. “They care about utility. They care about fuel economy. They care about safety and price.”
Hespen expects the models’ forthcoming turbocharged four-cylinder to garner a “not insignificant portion” of sales, thanks to its higher fuel efficiency compared to the current model’s base V-6. The crossover platform also reduces weight, leading to improved efficiency.
Americans are downsizing, Pipas said, so small utility vehicles like the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4 have nearly doubled their market share between 2000 and 2009. Pipas calls the Explorer a medium utility vehicle, a segment he said has held steady at around half of all SUV and crossover sales in the past decade. There are no plans for that to change.
What will change are its capabilities.
“People just don’t want to pay for excess,” Connelly said. She contrasted the next-gen Explorer with the previous truck-based SUV. The older model had considerable off-road capabilities, even though only a handful of buyers would use them that way.
“In the past, people didn’t give that stuff a lot of consideration,” she said. However, the new Explorer will feature a selectable traction system if drivers do go off-road or experience foul weather.
