With pine mulch, white spruce and bus exhaust perfuming the midmorning breeze, Ford revealed its new 2011 Explorer outside Herald Square’s landmark Macy’s department store in Manhattan on Monday.

The automaker envisioned Catskills-on-Broadway for its signature S.U.V.’s public unveiling, building a wooded hillock with a gently graded slope that descended to a campsite, where outdoorsy models sat rummaging through their fishing-tackle boxes, tucking into sandwiches and riding mountain bikes around their idyll’s perimeter.

Mike Rowe, a mainstay of Discovery Channel programming as well as television commercials for Ford, cued the Explorer’s entrance. The car emerged atop the hill, then coasted down to a knoll where Mr. Rowe intercepted Ford’s chief executive, Alan Mulally, as he exited the front passenger seat, beaming — due in no small part to the $2.6 billion second-quarter profit his company posted last week.

During the ensuing repartee, Mr. Mulally called attention to Ford’s social-media marketing approach for Monday’s revelation. “What’s going on today is getting talked about right now on Facebook, and it’s all over Twitter. To have this conversation happening all over the country is very exciting,” he said.

The Explorer will be assembled at the company’s Chicago plant, which builds another revived Ford nameplate, the Taurus sedan. Citing the $400 million investment that the Explorer represents to the plant, Mr. Mulally said, “We’re fighting for the soul of manufacturing in the United States.”

Though primary manufacturing and assembly will occur domestically, Ford’s sales strategy for its S.U.V. faces emphatically outward. “It will be sold in 90 countries,” Mr. Mulally said.

The new Explorer is being introduced to a market that has cooled on sport utility vehicles, the traditionally pickup-truck-based vehicle segment over which the Explorer reigned for well over a decade, selling more than six million units since its 1990 introduction. To lure buyers away from so-called crossover vehicles that have captured market share with superior ride comfort and gas mileage, Ford has created a more supple Explorer, eschewing the body-on-frame construction of its previous incarnations for a unibody setup based on that used by the Taurus.

Fuel efficiency is addressed via the company’s first domestic application of its turbocharged 2-liter 4-cylinder EcoBoost engine, which generates 237 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque. Ford executives claim a 30 percent combined efficiency improvement over the outgoing 4-liter V-6, which was rated at 14 miles per gallon in the city and 20 on the highway.  Also offered is the 3.5-liter V-6 found in other Ford products, good for 290 horsepower and 255 pound-feet of torque and a 20 percent increase in efficiency over the outgoing Explorer. What the V-6 sacrifices to the 4-cylinder in efficiency, it compensates for with a higher towing rating: 5,000 pounds versus the 4-cylinder’s 2,000.

Ford’s group vice president, David Leitch, said in an interview that mileage numbers have yet to be released for both drivetrains.

As further evidence of Ford’s intent to exorcise the Explorer’s gas-guzzler baggage, the brand expects consumers will be willing to pay a premium not for towing capacity, but for efficiency. “The EcoBoost 4 will be priced slightly higher than the base V-6,” Jay Ward, the Ford communication director, said in a phone conversation. Additionally, Explorers equipped with the turbo 4 will not be available with 4-wheel drive, whereas V-6 models are offered with either front- or 4-wheel drive.

A V-8 is no longer an engine option on the Explorer.

The Explorer will be offered at three trim levels when it goes on sale this winter: Explorer, XLT and Limited, with a base prices of $28,995, including $805 destination charges, ranging upward to $37,995 for the Limited, positioning it below the coming 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which starts at $30,995.

Source (article): NYTIMES

Source (pictures): ONLINESOCIALMEDIA, THEMUSTANGNEWS

WASHINGTON — Consumers who buy minicars to economize on fuel are making a big tradeoff when it comes to safety in collisions, according to an insurance group that slammed three minimodels into midsize ones in tests.

In a report prepared for release on Tuesday, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said that crash dummies in all three models tested — the Honda Fit, the Toyota Yaris and the Smart Fortwo — fared poorly in the collisions. By contrast, the midsize models into which they crashed fared well or acceptably. Both the minicars and midsize cars were traveling 40 miles per hour, so the crash occurs at 80 m.p.h.

The institute concludes that while driving smaller and lighter cars saves fuel, “downsizing and down-weighting is also associated with an increase in deaths on the highway,” said Adrian Lund, the institute’s president.

“It’s a big effect — it’s not small,” he said in a telephone interview.

Yet the institute did not quantify how many more highway deaths might be expected statistically from any increase in the use of minicars.

Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA, said the crash type chosen, a head-on collision, was a tiny fraction of accidents. He countered that the Smart Fortwo, with front and side airbags and electronic controls meant to help a driver avoid skidding, was very safe.

The institute usually tests cars individually but in this case paired the Honda Fit with a Honda Accord, the Toyota Yaris with a Toyota Camry and the Smart Fortwo with a Mercedes C-Class. (Both the Fortwo and the Mercedes are built by Daimler.)

The argument over weight versus safety is not a new one but took on greater significance when gasoline prices rose sharply last year, making minicars more popular. Consumers also seek out vehicles that burn less fuel so they will contribute less to global warming. Production of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, is proportional to fuel use, and the Smart claims to be the highest-mileage car powered by gasoline on the American market.

When the institute crashed the Smart into the Mercedes C-Class sedan, the Smart, which weighs half as much as the sedan, went airborne and spun around one and a half times. The institute’s crash laboratory did not clock the speed of the rebound, but calculated that in a collision between cars of that weight, the sedan would slow down by 27 m.p.h. while the two-seater would change speed by 53 m.p.h., moving backward at 13 m.p.h.

The institute suggested steps that would further both fuel economy and safety rather than put them in conflict: cutting the speed limit and reducing horsepower. (Average horsepower is 70 percent higher in new cars now than it was in the mid-1980s, the institute said.)

But there is little support for either move. Some car efficiency experts have recommended making cars light but also large, with energy-absorbing crush zones. With several feet of car body in front of the driver, the energy of a crash can be dissipated and the suddenness of the change in velocity can be reduced, they say.

In any case, the statistical connection between vehicle weight and the risk to occupants is not completely clear. In 2002, the National academy of Sciences said that steps by car manufacturers to reduce vehicle weight to comply with federal fuel economy standards had resulted in 1,300 to 2,600 additional deaths in 1993. But the number has not been updated.

Complicating matters, a statistical graph included in the institute’s study indicated that per million cars registered that were one to three years old in 2007, the death rate was higher for drivers in small cars than in minis, which are even smaller. One reason might be that the smallest cars are not driven as many miles on high-speed roadways, Mr. Lund said.

Source (article): NYTIMES

Source (picture): POLANDIAN.WORDPRESS, NYTIMES