The front seats are comfortable. They are wider and offer more fore-and-aft travel than before. We found the cloth seats in the XLT comfortable, firm, and supportive, with lots of adjustments. The same held true for the leather seats in the Eddie Bauer model.
Seat heaters are part of the Eddie Bauer way of living. They keep you warm while the truck is still heating up. The buttons that control them are mounted in an awkward location, on the sides of seats. Reaching down to the side of the driver's seat, the left hand is confronted with an array of seat adjusters; finding and pressing the seat-heater button is a challenge. When you succeed, however, a small indicator lights up on the climate-control display. Likewise, it isn't always easy to find the seat-height adjuster. Rake is easy to adjust, and there's a knob on the up-level seats for cranking in some lumbar support.
Adjustable pedals, a tilt steering wheel, and long seat travel help the Explorer fit a wide variety of body types. Big coat hooks accommodate thick hangers and big loads of dry cleaning, something few manufacturers get right. Nicely designed cubbies with rubber mats provide space for wallet, sunglasses, a pen, cans, and bottles. A relatively large center console keep odds and ends in check. Interior door handles seem a bit awkward at first, but that went away with familiarization. Map pockets on the insides of the doors are handy and swell at the end to hold water bottles, but wouldn't accommodate a one-liter water bottle. The front power outlet was positioned well for a cell phone, but like most, was a bit of a reach for a radar detector. The trip computer came in handy, calculating the distance to an empty fuel tank.
The six-disc in-dash CD player sounds good and is easy to operate, with large, clearly marked controls; it worked very well for books on CD, which take up multiple discs, and I found I could easily rewind to replay passages missed while concentrating on driving.
The second row of seats, the row we recommend for those who don't get to drive or sit up front, is quite comfortable. Sliding your feet under the front seats increases legroom. Many people prefer second-row bucket seats, which are more comfortable but only accommodate two passengers.
Third-row seating is available. In fact, the decision to add third-row seating drove the design and engineering of the current Explorer. As a result, Ford has done an excellent job of making the third row as roomy as possible, while making it flip quickly out of the way when it isn't needed. The third row offers as much headroom as the second row, but legroom, shoulder room and hip room are significantly compromised. After flipping the second-row seat neatly out of the way, you can climb back there, fold the second-row seat back into position and slide your feet underneath, which provides somewhat tolerable legroom. It isn't comfortable for an adult, however. There's little shoulder room, and the seat itself is a bit hard on the outboard edge; it pushes you away from the outboard side toward the center. It'll work okay for small children, but if you need to carry six or seven adults on a regular basis, you may want to consider a bigger SUV, such as the Expedition, or a minivan, such as the new Freestar.
Leaving the third row in place does not leave much room in back for groceries or other items. Fortunately, the third row easily folds away. Simply squeeze a lever and lightly push the seat forward. With some practice, it's possible to unlock the rear hatch, open it, and flip the third row out of the way with one hand, important when juggling an armload of groceries. The third-row bench folds neatly into the foot well.
Well, maybe not so neatly. In fact, neither the second- nor the third-row seats fold perfectly flat, so the load surface slopes back toward the rear hatch. A sliding cover bridges the gap between the two folded seats, but you could still lose small items through the cracks and it's not as dog friendly as we'd like.
Though we haven't seen one, five-passenger models are supposed to offer a flatter cargo floor, a bit more cargo capacity, and some useful storage below the floor. Seven-passenger models provide 79.9 cubic feet of cargo space with rear seats folded, while five-passenger models offer 86.2 cubic feet with rear seats folded. Not opting for the third row may reduce the Explorer's resale value, however.
Explorer's cargo floor is relatively low, good when loading heavy cargo. Pressing a button on the rear hatch opens the rear glass separately. The lower edge of the rear window is very low, so it's not too difficult to lift smaller objects up and through the window, saving time and effort. After raising the rear hatch, a grab handle helps the height-challenged pull it down before closing. Next Page