{"id":64535,"date":"2025-05-31T08:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T12:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/rediscovering-ford-a-journey-through-heritage-in-the-electric-explorer\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T08:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T12:18:07","slug":"rediscovering-ford-a-journey-through-heritage-in-the-electric-explorer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/rediscovering-ford-a-journey-through-heritage-in-the-electric-explorer\/","title":{"rendered":"Rediscovering Ford: A Journey Through Heritage in the Electric Explorer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exploring the Ford Explorer: A Journey Through Heritage and Innovation<\/p>\n

A sunny April morning set the stage for an exciting adventure. The air was crisp, and the promise of a road trip loomed large as I prepared to take the new Ford Explorer on a journey that would blend nostalgia with modernity. This wasn\u2019t just any car; it was Ford\u2019s first all-European electric vehicle, built on Volkswagen\u2019s MEB platform. But would it still feel like a true Ford? <\/p>\n

The backdrop of my journey was rich with history. Ford\u2019s legacy in the UK began over a century ago in Trafford Park, Manchester, where the company produced the iconic Model T. As I set off, I couldn\u2019t help but reflect on the significance of this location. It was here that Henry Ford laid the groundwork for a brand that would become synonymous with innovation and accessibility in the automotive world.<\/p>\n

Why Did Ford Choose Volkswagen’s Platform?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret that Ford\u2019s decision to base the Explorer and its sibling, the Capri, on Volkswagen\u2019s well-established MEB platform was a strategic move. With the electric vehicle market heating up in Europe, Ford needed to catch up. The MEB platform, already proven in models like the ID.3 and ID.4, offered a reliable foundation for Ford\u2019s ambitious EV plans. While some purists might grumble about this collaboration, it\u2019s a pragmatic choice in a rapidly evolving industry.<\/p>\n

As I settled into the Explorer, I felt a mix of excitement and skepticism. Would this vehicle, built on a rival\u2019s platform, still embody the spirit of Ford? My journey would soon reveal the answer.<\/p>\n

A Road Trip with Purpose<\/p>\n

The plan was straightforward: a day-long drive from Manchester to Ford\u2019s heritage center in Daventry, then on to Dunton, the current British headquarters. Along the way, I aimed to connect the dots between the Explorer and its storied ancestors. After all, it\u2019s not just about the car; it\u2019s about the legacy it carries.<\/p>\n

Our first stop was the Sandbach service area, where a bank of Instavolt chargers awaited. The Explorer charged quickly, and I took a moment to appreciate how far EV infrastructure has come. It wasn\u2019t long before we were back on the road, cruising smoothly along the M6. The Explorer\u2019s performance was impressive; it felt stable and comfortable, with responsive steering that made long-distance driving a breeze.<\/p>\n

As we drove, I couldn\u2019t help but notice the differences in driving dynamics compared to traditional petrol vehicles. The Explorer\u2019s efficiency was evident, especially at a cruising speed of around 70 mph. I found that a slight reduction in speed could significantly extend our range\u2014a crucial insight for anyone considering an electric vehicle.<\/p>\n

Immersing in Ford\u2019s Heritage<\/p>\n

Arriving at the Ford heritage center in Daventry was like stepping into a time capsule. Surrounded by classic models and racing legends, I felt a renewed sense of connection to the brand. The curator, Len Keen, shared stories of Ford\u2019s impact on the automotive landscape, highlighting how the company has consistently pushed boundaries. <\/p>\n

The collection featured everything from everyday models to iconic race cars, showcasing Ford\u2019s versatility and innovation. It was a reminder that while the Explorer may be built on a different platform, its lineage is deeply rooted in a tradition of excellence.<\/p>\n

The Journey Continues<\/p>\n

After a warm welcome and a few hours of exploration, we set off for Dunton. The drive along the A45 was both scenic and nostalgic, passing through areas that once housed major British car manufacturers. With each mile, I felt the Explorer\u2019s character solidifying. It was comfortable, composed, and distinctly Ford.<\/p>\n

As we approached Dunton, I reflected on the day\u2019s journey. We had covered 230 miles, averaging 54 mph while achieving a respectable 3.5 miles per kWh. The Explorer had performed admirably, dispelling any doubts I had about its identity. <\/p>\n

By the time we reached Dunton, I was convinced: the Ford Explorer is not just another electric vehicle; it\u2019s a testament to Ford\u2019s ability to adapt and innovate while honoring its rich heritage. It felt like a Ford in every sense, from its design to its driving experience.<\/p>\n

The big takeaway? Embracing change doesn\u2019t mean losing identity. The Ford Explorer, with its blend of modern technology and historical roots, exemplifies how a brand can evolve while staying true to its core values. If you\u2019re considering an electric vehicle, this one deserves a spot on your list. Start with one change this week, and you\u2019ll likely spot the difference by month\u2019s end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"ford<\/a><\/p>\n

\n There’s enough Ford magic to make the origins of its platform a moot point<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We trace the American car giant’s UK past in the electric Explorer to see if this VW-based EV still feels like a Ford<\/p>\n

\n

It was a bright, beautiful April Fool\u2019s Day. At 6.30am, a magnificent golden orb lit the eastern horizon with a brilliance we probably won\u2019t see more than a dozen times this year.<\/p>\n

The breeze was sweet and the air so clear you could practically see blades of grass on the horizon.<\/p>\n

Despite the beleaguered state of the retail motor industry, the news feeds were already filling with car companies\u2019 traditional April Fool spoofs: a free tattoo for every new Volkswagen <\/a>owner, BMW<\/a> to launch an off-road<\/a> version of the M2<\/a> \u2013 that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

And in Manchester, the Volkswagen ID 4<\/a> in which I was about to cross the country had turned into a Ford.<\/a><\/p>\n

To be fair, we\u2019ve known for years that Ford was basing its first all-European electric cars<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the Explorer<\/a> and the Capri<\/a> \u2013 on the VW Group\u2019s excellent and well-proven MEB platform, the same component set used to underpin the ID 3 <\/a>and ID 4.<\/p>\n

This was undoubtedly a pragmatic decision, given that Ford urgently needs to do better in the European EV race. And despite a nine-month production delay, the project is turning into a modest \u2013 if\u00a0not yet profitable \u2013 success.<\/p>\n

Selfishly speaking, Ford\u2019s MEB decision didn\u2019t suit me. Outside the limits of the impartiality needed to be a fair-minded road tester, I\u2019m a Ford fan: my grandfather was a pioneering Ford dealer in the Australian bush, we had lots of family Fords and my first new car was a Cortina 1600E.<\/p>\n

My view of Ford is that it may make everyman cars, but it also does things first \u2013 such as the life-changing Model T, the first affordable V8, unitary steel construction, MacPherson struts, the original Mustang<\/a>, the GT40, the first \u2018computer-designed\u2019 Cortina, all those fast Escorts and much, much more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I simply didn\u2019t enjoy the notion of a me-too European Ford based on a rival manufacturer\u2019s mainstream product. Especially a Volkswagen.<\/p>\n

After all, it\u2019s not so long since the glorious, game-changing Ford Focus was forcing all comers \u2013 and most prominently Ferdinand Pi\u00ebch\u2019s Mk5 VW Golf<\/a> \u2013 to ride, steer and handle better to\u00a0meet a much-elevated industry standard.<\/p>\n

When James Attwood\u2019s 2025 Ford Explorer long-termer \u2013 a \u00a350k, two-wheel-drive long-range model \u2013 arrived a few weeks ago, it became clear it was high time for me to get over myself.<\/p>\n

Especially since Attwood had pronounced it a good machine, distinct from the various VW Group models with the same underpinnings.<\/p>\n

A workable plan seemed to be to immerse the Explorer \u2013 and myself \u2013 in as much Ford heritage as we could find in a day, to see how well it fitted. Or how well it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The simple plan was to take it on a day-long journey starting at Trafford Park, Manchester, where Henry Ford made 300,000 Model Ts for his first 20 years of British business from 1911, before moving to Dagenham in the early 1930s and turning the Manchester place over to the manufacture of Rolls-Royce<\/a> Merlin aero engines during the war years.<\/p>\n

From there, we would roll across the country to Ford\u2019s heritage centre at Daventry, to associate the Explorer with as many of its ancestors as possible under the eye of curator Len Keen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then we\u2019d continue south-east to Dunton, the research centre that nowadays doubles as Ford\u2019s British HQ, ending our journey beside a statue of the founder, Old Henry, erected at Dagenham in 1944 and now overlooking Dunton\u2019s main entrance.<\/p>\n

This drive would be typically British: plenty\u00a0of motorway, plenty of potholes, some sinuous\u00a0A- and B-roads and some recharging episodes, with all the parking and service area manoeuvring this involved.<\/p>\n

Photographer Jack and I arrived in Manchester the night before our journey was to begin, hoping that an unsuccessful meeting with a steam-driven 22kW Geniepoint charger outside our otherwise-comfortable Trafford hotel wasn\u2019t an omen of things to follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For no good reason it wouldn\u2019t function, which meant our journey couldn\u2019t begin with a full tank, as it were.<\/p>\n

One thing the hotel did have, bizarrely, was a parking line of about a dozen used, obviously recently imported Yankee cars for sale via eBay. Evidently the vendor was using the hotel car park for selling.<\/p>\n

We photographed our Explorer beside a US-market Explorer of a very different persuasion, wondering at Ford\u2019s tendency to spread familiar names over models of different characters and layouts.<\/p>\n

Before departure the following morning, I rang the Geniepoint helpline to report the charger failure on behalf of other arriving hopefuls, to be greeted by a polite woman with a voice full of concern, who reset the charger there and then.<\/p>\n

I watched it click into action, but its charge rate was too slow to justify our waiting. Still, it was a good sign: even when you\u2019re talking duff chargers, EV life is getting better.<\/p>\n

The only sign these days of Ford\u2019s former presence at Trafford Park is a blue plaque in one of the many entrance halls of the Trafford Centre, a staggeringly huge and spacious multi-storey mall of satisfyingly appropriate American influence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We found and read the plaques, then jumped back in the car and headed hot-foot for the open road, hooking up after a mile or two with the M6 motorway.<\/p>\n

Our immediate destination, 40 miles on, was the Sandbach service area and a reassuring bank of a dozen Instavolt chargers that converted our 35% of battery capacity to 85% at a rate of 85kW in the time it took us to drink a couple of cappuccinos.<\/p>\n

It was pricey, mind, at 89p per kWh. Ford\u2019s Daventry heritage base \u2013 also a massive parts store and the site of the Henry Ford Academy where technicians further their skills \u2013 was now an easy 92 miles away.<\/p>\n

The car was doing unobtrusively well. It turns out to be a composed cruiser with long-distance seats and sweet steering that\u2019s notably accurate at the straight-ahead and thus not tiring for longer journeys.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much road noise on smooth stuff but, like many German-developed cars, it gets noisy on the coarse surfaces that\u00a0are much more prevalent here in the UK\u00a0than they are elsewhere in Europe.<\/p>\n

We cruised at around 70mph on the speedo (knock off 2mph for built-in error) because we soon established that at this speed, with a little care, you could turn 3.5mpkWh \u2013 the claimed WLTP figure; cruising just a shade quicker caused the figure to fall to 3.1-3.2mpkWh.<\/p>\n

You become aware of the exponential rise of aero drag with speed so much sooner in an EV\u00a0than you do in a petrol car.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A slightly lower speed and consequent better consumption can add 10-15 miles to the range you get from a 50kW charge while making no important difference to your journey time (this point proved by my own assiduous observations of sat-nav arrival predictions).<\/p>\n

I was clocking such esoterics as Jack drove, proving himself expert at seeing interesting traffic (\u201cDid you spot that new Corvette?\u201d), which added a lot to the interest of our progress.<\/p>\n

With miles, the Ford grew on us both. It seemed supple and comfortable, and we negated the sometime road noise by raising our voices when necessary.<\/p>\n

Neither of us was truly expert on how this chassis compared with a VW version, but our background impression (confirmed later by Attwood) was that the ride was a bit softer yet well damped and composed. This was another good Ford sign. So was the styling: I was liking the blocky, well-proportioned shape.<\/p>\n

We stayed an hour in Daventry, mainly because Len Keen and his two technician colleagues, Chris and Andy, were so welcoming. The Ford heritage collection brilliantly combines perfect examples of ordinary models with hero cars driven by Hannu Mikkola, Roger Clark and a dozen other road and track stars.<\/p>\n

They also continue to preserve the Autocar-badged M-Sport Fiesta ST <\/a>in which then staffer Chris Harris won his class in Wales Rally GB 20 years ago (which had an echo for me; I watched him do it).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photographer Jack, compact of build, amused us with his claim to be the one bloke in our group who could perfectly fit Ford\u2019s beautiful silver GT40, the road-going model with wire wheels and three-eared knock-offs, that was sized for Walter Hayes, the legendary communications chief whose determination and strong influence with the Ford family led to the creation of the Ford DFV racing V8, surely the most successful Formula 1 engine in history.<\/p>\n

On we drove through the afternoon towards Dunton in Essex, spearing east from Daventry\u00a0on the evocative A45 that links half a dozen defunct British car factories (including Jaguar<\/a> at Browns Lane and various British Leyland places south of Coventry).<\/p>\n

This road also doubled for a while as a test track for 1950s Le Mans<\/a> Jaguars. One story has it that Jag founder Sir William Lyons well understood the need for fast shakedowns on weekdays, but frowned on the idea of high-speed testing on a Sunday\u2026<\/p>\n

As we drove, this Ford was taking hold of me. Its composure was starting to remind me of Parry-Jones-era Fords, one of which (a Mondeo) I\u2019d driven quite a lot just a few weeks before.<\/p>\n

This felt like a European Ford, which is a compliment. In particular it was different in composure terms from the US-developed Ford Mustang Mach-E<\/a>, whose engineers have just about managed to tame a pitching motion in steady-state cruising, after years of trying. This EV had overtones\u00a0of Ford\u2019s European golden age.<\/p>\n

At Dunton, Henry Ford was waiting.\u00a0We arrived just before knock-off time at 4pm,\u00a0which means the cornering shots we did on\u00a0the entrance roundabout (see above) were a\u00a0bit unhelpful to the departing workforce.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0all, we notched 230 miles at an average speed of 54mph, consuming power at 3.5mpkWh \u2013 a very decent performance. The car\u2019s economy and its real-world range were honest figures, in line with the maker\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

Best of all it felt and looked like a Ford, and not a Volkswagen. In one enjoyable day, the ghosts were laid to rest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}