Vectors and the Ford Explorer EcoBoost

THE FORD Explorer 2.3-L EcoBoost

The Ford 1-liter EcoBoost engine has basically been on its own for quite a while.

When it first popped up onto the scene, and able to sit on a sheet of paper and fit in a suitcase, it was a technological tour de force.

Not necessarily because of what innovative new technologies it brought forward but because of what happened when they all worked together correctly and efficiently.

Not just one thing here or one thing there, not just turbos or supercharging or one of each, but a reworking of how they all work together.

This little engine won several classes in the International Engine of the Year awards, including overall wins and green engine wins. In 2016, it once again won the sub 1-L class.

Yet, as much as we applaud this particular EcoBoost powerplant, we were rather timid in giving our compliments to other engines and Ford models with the same badge.

For one, an engine may be stellar but that ain’t all that anymore. Even the Ford engineers admitted that the most impressive gains are now made with transmission.

And while engines are moving forward in technology, transmissions aren’t exactly keeping up. We have seen some great motors matched to some truly uninspiring transmissions. The shifters just haven’t caught up yet in terms of what people want in driving feel.

So yes, you could get nice efficiency jumps, but they often came at the cost of decent transmission feel.

Which brings us to the Ford Explorer 2.3-L EcoBoost. This was basically a car that I previously accused of trying to use the halo of the 999-cc EcoBoost way too much.

I could see where the engineers (and even more, the marketing people) were trying to go with this, but as a car guy, I pushed it out of a good friend’s mind just before he signed on the dotted line. That was the previous configuration.

I picked up the new one, and my first comment—honestly, while I was signing papers as it was idling beside and then around me—was “hey, this seems smooth.”

The next morning, I took it up to Baguio, and it was basically nonintrusive. It is front-wheel drive (the 3.5-L Sport V6 is AWD) and mated to a six-speed SelectShift Automatic.

It wasn’t a tire-burner or an Autobahn Stormer, but it also wasn’t the lackluster performer some previous models have been accused of being.

It was big and heavy, and handled just as you would expect a big American SUV. It wasn’t as excessively wallowy as the big beasts of yorn, but it wouldn’t turn on a dime either. As I said, unintrusive. Which, for most people and most situations, is good.

Then we got to Kennon Road, and started going upwards with tight turns and sudden starts and stops as other vehicles began wavering before us.

My wife made the comment that the engine seemed to be working hard, so I checked the instruments. Surprise.

We were going up Kennon Road generally below 2000 revolutions per minute. With the exception of sudden (and surprisingly smooth) lunges forward to get past something that was having issues, that’s generally where we stayed—below or just above 2000 rpm.

The noise my wife heard was the truck behind us. The little 2.3 seemed quite quietly calm. Based on specs, max torque of 408 Newton-meters comes in at 3000 rpm, so we weren’t even hitting that. Didn’t need to, apparently.

In terms of tuning and engineering, you didn’t need to rely on peaky torque curves or tight turbocharged power bands to get this heavy thing moving smoothly uphill.

It was just a regular day behind the wheel. Certainly not the drives up to Baguio I remember from my youth: nice and relaxed, kids asleep in the back.

So the engineers have now been able to put together a big vehicle that uses a small engine but behaves more than ever like the big American gas-guzzlers it is supposed to replace.

It is relatively smooth, and it produces power relatively low in the rev range, and it basically eases you along in comfort without bothering you.

In all honesty, I have loved the visual look of the Explorer for a long time, I was not particularly happy with what I believed was looks-driven design that made city driving harder than it needed to be, and I really wondered about the engines.

I would rather they stayed old-school than make not-there-yet attempts at meeting the needs of the new world.

But Ford persevered. They played the long game. And they have produced something that really works.

This execution of their EcoBoost philosophy shows more clearly than ever before that Big Blue has a place in the modern automotive world.

And yes, the Explorer has always been much-loved for its looks, luxury and portrayal of strength and power.

Now, it is an example of taking technology and shaping it into what customers of the brand expect.

When we talked to Ford engineers about what exactly EcoBoost was, they didn’t give succinct one-word answers.

That looked like they were being evasive, but it is now clear that they had a vision and a lot of little things working toward that final direction. And it is a direction, not a destination.

Or perhaps for the math geeks and engineers, since the EcoBoost push seem to have both direction and (happily increasing) magnitude, a vector.