Be careful of condemning the Explorer out of hand (OK, those of you who have been here a while knew I couldn't resist, right?).
Both Ford and Chevy started out with big but crude SUVs in the 1970's. I owned an early Chevy K-Blazer, and I loved it. Starting in 1978, Ford had a full-sized Bronco to compete with it.
As the gas crisis of the 1980's came on, both the Bronco and the Blazer were downsized into clown cars. Both were essentially mini-pickup trucks with an enclosed back. The Bronco was eventually discontinued. The Blazer was downsized into the S-10 Blazer.
Then an amazing thing happened. Having discovered that they were missing an emerging market, both Ford and Chevy re-upsized their vehicles, now known as SUVs (ta-dah!!). The Blazer was re-introduced as the TrailBlazer. The Bronco was reintroduced as the Explorer.
Like the Bronco, the original Explorer was still pretty small, and stayed that way through the first two generations (from 1994-2001). Then, in 2002, the Explorer went through a major redesign. In this case, "redesign" meant "jack up the nameplate and slide a new vehicle under it". It got much bigger, more powerful, more elegant, and more capable. Just by luck, I bought a 2002 Explorer, and towed my first TM with it for 160,000 miles. It was wonderful! A perfect tow vehicle for our use in the east, and in the Rocky Mountains and Sierras of the west. A few tow vehicles would have been better all around, but not many.
Now we have a 2007 Explorer, and it is the last of a dying breed, driven into the dust by an obsession with mpg (a whole different discussion). Again, it is a wonderful tow vehicle. The small V-8 (4.6L), together with a 114-inch wheelbase and 7000-pound tow rating, make it excellent vehicle for pulling our 2720SL all around the country, for several thousand miles a year.
In short, your 1998 Explorer, with its wheelbase of 102 inches, really shouldn't be used to judge the suitability of an Explorer from the 2002-2010 era. The 2011 Explorer is a different story, discussed in a different thread.
Bill
|