MotorMouths

By any name or description, the new Explorer easily deserves to be at or near the top of an SUV (or crossover) shopping list.

The 2011 Ford Explorer is bigger but drives smaller. It’s modern. It’s filled with high-tech features that don’t make me feel like an idiot. And it gets good gas mileage. Oh, and it looks really nice, too.

The new Explorer’s excellence on pavement, its safety equipment and its comforts are likely to match the needs of many families most of the time. It may well be the new benchmark in its class.

Ford has wiped the grins off everyone’s faces with this new turbocharged Explorer. All things considered, it’s one of the best three-row crossovers you can buy.

The Explorer Sport offers a combination of power, space, and comfort. What is more needed in a three-row crossover, these things, or agile handling?

The 2011 Ford Explorer is altogether pleasant for the whole family and nearly car-like to drive. It has responsive acceleration, just-right braking and a smooth and surprisingly quiet feel on the road.

If you’re looking for a quiet, relatively comfortable three-row midsize SUV with gadgets galore, and aren’t fixated on having a status vehicle in your driveway, the Explorer Limited packs a lot of goodies at a relatively reasonable price. Just don’t expect an out-of-the-ordinary driving experience.

This new Explorer, with its new tightly constructed unibody platform, is quieter than any recent SUV we can recall. Look out GMC Acadia, Honda Pilot and Toyota Highlander: Suburbia’s new Explorer has arrived.

The Explorer has leapt into the 21st century with the rest of the crossover crowd. It’s certainly lost a bit of its off-road chops, but that tradeoff for the 99 percent of Explorer buyers who never venture off-pavement is welcome.

For the all-new 2011 Ford Explorer the emphasis is on-pavement excellence. The new Explorer addresses demands for much better fuel economy, a gentler ride, higher overall quality, more safety and electronics.

The 2011 Ford Explorer is probably more capable off road than 90% of the world, and 95% of its owners could ever ask for, and it has a comfortable high-tech interior.

What a difference a year makes. Just take a look at a 2010 Ford Explorer parked next to a totally redesigned 2011 model. Only a year separates the two but in terms of appearance and workmanship they might as well have been made in different decades. Hot and not.