Ford Explorer SUV Rollover

Ford Explorer - "The SUV Rollover King"

Ford Explorer rollover and SUV rollover lawyers and attorneys in Houston, Texas claim when Ford first introduced the Ford Explorer it soon became a marketing dream - the perfect vehicle for a baby-boom generation that wanted it all. You could use it as your family car, and it had the rugged, adventurous image of a truck. The problem however, was it was still a big, tall truck and it rolled over more easily than a passenger car would. The roots of that problem lie in Ford's original design decision to build the new sport utility on the skeleton (frame) of a pickup truck instead of all in one piece, like a car. Ford was under pressure to compete with General Motors new SUV to be called the Blazer and to tap into the emerging new market opened up by Jeep and the Jeep CJ craze. The rollover problem had not become a priority until a controversy erupted in the late 1980's over the rollover record of the Bronco II, which was also based on a Ranger pickup truck underbody. Ford however did not learn from its past mistakes. Using the Ranger's underbody for the Explorer too, this gave Ford the image it wanted, with the budget it needed. But while the Explorer looked roomy, its design actually limited the weight it could safely carry. By extending the passenger compartment and installing a second row of seats, Ford made the Explorer more than 600 pounds heavier than the Ranger but did not upgrade the suspension and tires to carry the bigger load. That meant a typically equipped Explorer could carry 1,025 pounds, even less than the 1,100 pounds for a Taurus. Many Explorers are built to carry as little as 900 pounds - a 150-pound person in each of five seats and 150 pounds of cargo. Ford also chose the same size tires it had long chosen for the Ford Ranger. Those tires had the lowest possible rating for withstanding high temperatures. And when Ford lowered the recommended tire pressure in 1989 to increase stability and soften the ride, it also further reduced the tires' ability to carry weight without overheating. Tire pressure has of course become an issue in the Firestone controversy, with Firestone arguing that the lower recommended pressure - 26 pounds per square inch, compared with 35 for the Ranger - had contributed to the tires' failure, especially where Explorers were being driven at high speeds during the hot summer months.

Consumer Reports: Ford Explorer Rollover Problems from the Start

Consumer Reports had already criticized the Ford Explorer's two-door ancestor, the Bronco II, for a tendency to roll over during certain medium to high-speed turns. Having already designed most of the Explorer and ordered its parts, company documents show, Ford searched anxiously for a solution. Ford executives, by their own account, were surprised by the extent of the Bronco's problems. Even so, rollover problems had plagued sport utilities since primitive truck-based ones were built for the military during World War II. Indeed, costly rollover lawsuits involving truck-based Jeeps had pushed American Motors to design the Jeep Cherokee from scratch as a sport utility vehicle in the early 1980's. But once a sport utility is built on a pickup truck base, particularly a base designed for another vehicle, it is extremely difficult to make it as stable as a well designed car-based model, most auto engineers say. Car-based vehicles have two main advantages. Their seats and occupants sit lower - and hence their center of gravity is also considerably lower. And since they are built as a single unit, they are more rigid than vehicles whose passenger compartments and underbodies are manufactured separately. Most other sport utility vehicles are also built on pickup truck underbodies. Indeed, many have rollover death rates considerably higher than the Explorer's. But the Explorer has become the most visible example of the problem because of recent deaths in sport utility vehicles after treads peeled off their Firestone tires.

Ford Explorer Introduced

When the Explorer was introduced in 1990, Ford was concerned enough about its stability that it advised owners to maintain a relatively low tire pressure of 26 pounds per square inch, because softer tires help an out-of-control vehicle to slide rather than tip over. Yet the redesign in the '95 model year made the Explorer's center of gravity slightly higher and the stability index--a rough measure of rollover propensity--slightly worse, records show.

With the new suspension system Ford installed in 1995 and later model Explorers, the auto maker could have lowered the center of gravity of the top-heavy vehicles by lowering the engine height, according to memos by Ford engineers. But the company decided to retain the original engine position, at least partly to hold down redesign costs and preserve profit margins of nearly 40% on the popular Explorer, the documents show. A Ford spokesman acknowledged a small rise in the Explorer's center of gravity with the '95 redesign, but said the difference is inconsequential.