Ford Explorer Review: One Of The Cars You Can Buy

There was a time when you’d be reading reviews of Ford’s shiny new C-segment car against Volkswagen’s C-segment car, and it would be a huge deal. Two different brands with two distinct approaches to building cars, both a dominant force in the UK market and with a genuine interest in who does it better.

Times have changed, though. Ford and Volkswagen may still be competing with each other, but to do so, the two have started working together more closely than anyone could’ve really predicted two decades ago (if we ignore the Galaxy/Sharan for a brief second).

What started off as the two utilising light commercial vehicle platforms to reduce the costs of making vans, a practice commonly deployed by other manufacturers, has now developed into a platform-sharing relationship.

By that, we mean Ford is using Volkswagen’s MEB platform for its own electric passenger cars and popping a few bits of its own in to differentiate them from VW’s ID range. So then, that’s how we’ve ended up with the Ford Explorer.

In effect, this is a VW ID4 with some boxier bodywork, Ford badges and a slightly tweaked interior. If you’ve ever read about or driven a VW ID4, you may be able to predict the direction this review is heading.

On the outside, it does at least look different enough but honestly, it’s up to you to decide if one car looks better than the other. Both are pretty featureless, and personally I’d like to have seen Ford do more to spice up the Explorer.

As it is, particularly in a dull colour, there’s not a single design element to get me excited. It’s as if someone has gone, ‘Yes, this is car’ while sketching it and then happily left it at that.

It’s a pretty similar tale inside, really. Ford has brought in its own infotainment system, handily, with the Sync software a significant improvement on the one you’d find in VW’s ID cars. The larger, vertically-set screen is welcome too – although it’s still too fiddly to use on the go.

A lot of the car’s settings, including climate control, switching off annoying beeps from over-intrusive safety systems or setting your drive modes, are all buried within the screen. It means you’re diverting your eyes away from the road a little too often, and it’s another for the pile of ‘please, just give me some buttons’.

Other tweaks include a Ford-specific square steering wheel and seats, but the cabin is otherwise very VW with its switchgear and general layout. It’s spacious and well-built, and there’s a pretty handy amount of extra storage space (you can slide the screen up, for example) but it’s hardly exciting. Think lots of monotone colours, and a general lack of inspiration, but it’s perfectly fine if you don’t care about the car you’re in.

Space in the rear seats will keep the kids happy while they’re scrolling away on TikTok while you’re at a public charger, although the dog may not be happy that the Explorer’s max 450-litre boot capacity with all seats in place leaves it lagging behind most rivals. The platform-sharing Skoda Enyaq offers 585 litres, for example, and even the ID4 beats the Explorer comfortably with 543 litres.

Go for a single-motor car and you’ll get a 77kWh battery with a quoted range of 374 miles or there’s the option of the car we’ve tested, a dual-motor, 79kWh car.

That’s said to return 329 miles on a single charge. Our week-long test returned 3.5mi/kWh, equating to about 277 miles of range – although with the stipulation that it’s in a freezing cold February. Expect that to be closer to 300 in warmer months.

You might shorten that if you often call upon the 335bhp and 501lb ft of torque though it hardly beckons you to do so. That makes for enough grunt to make pulling out of junctions and merging on motorways effortless, but there’s no real fun to be had in thrashing the Explorer.

That’s something the chassis reflects. Steering feel is non-existent, body roll is pretty persistent under harder cornering and there’s obviously no sound. Not that any of these things really matter in an electric SUV, but it feels like our duty of care to mention them anyway.

Rather, you’ll be more interested to know that around town, it’s… fine. Visibility is about par for the course of modern SUVs which is to say not as good as you’d like but it offsets that with cameras and sensors. It rides fairly comfortably too, although cars on bigger wheels like ours don’t do a fantastic job of isolating bigger bumps.

The overarching story of the Ford Explorer is of a car that is just about average in pretty much every fashion.

It doesn’t offer any headline quirks, any form of excitement nor does it excel at being a car that just does car things. All of that feels like a product of being VW that’s known for being a bit meh, with a different face.

It’s not like it’s offering unmissable value for money, either. It starts at a competitive £39,875, but that’ll rise dramatically once you start ticking options. Our top-spec press car sits at an eye-twinging list price of £58,125.

If you were to buy a Ford Explorer, it’d be absolutely fine at being a car. But is there a compelling enough reason to consider it above anything else? Unless you can get an incredible finance deal, not really, no.