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It lasted just four years.
Reviled since its 1999 introduction as the "Ford Valdez," the Excursion was intended to one-up archrival Chevrolet and its Suburban — up till then the largest SUV sold in the United States. The Excursion featured a 6.8-liter V-10 engine, could seat ten people and haul 10,000 pounds. Socially irresponsible? The moan-and-groan chorus headquartered in New York City thought so — and did everything it could to smear the big Ford. But the Excursion was never a threat to the environment — its big V-10 ran so cleanly, in fact, that the truck qualified under federal regulations as a Low Emissions Vehicle (LEV), producing a planet-friendly 43-percent less smog-forming effluvia than the law demanded. The Excursion was also designed to be 80 percent recyclable at the end of its life cycle. And it was never intended to be a high-volume, mass-produced vehicle. Optimistic estimates envisioned an annual yearly production of 30,000 Excursions — hardly sufficient to trigger planetary catastrophe. "But who needs such a monstrous vehicle?" the critics screeched? "Need," of course, is entirely subjective and completely beside the point — unless we accept the idea that a handful of self-appointed know-betters are going to decide on our behalf what sort of vehicles we'll be allowed to drive. In that case, sports cars and other "impractical" or "flashy" cars are not likely to pass muster with the Commissariat of Appropriate Vehicles. People buy the kinds of cars and trucks they want for reasons of their own — and that's how it ought to be. This is America — right? And besides, sometimes a single large vehicle is more efficient and arguably "socially responsible." Is it better, for example, for a large family to have several smaller cars that, collectively, burn as much or more gas as one large SUV such as the Excursion? And isn't it better to have just one large vehicle "clogging the roads" than two or three small cars? How about small businesses, commercial users, and others who have a definite "need" for a large, more capable vehicle? None of that mattered, ultimately. It became politically incorrect to own an Excursion — and social opprobrium combined with the limited potential market for so large a vehicle resulted in the plug being pulled. Rest in peace. Meanwhile, the same forces that succeeded in demonizing the Excursion are beavering away at every other SUV. In California, the general assembly passed — and Governor Gray Davis just signed — a new law that puts every SUV (indeed every car larger than a 2,500 pound 4-cylinder compact) in the gun sights. The law categorizes carbon dioxide produced by internal combustion engines a "pollutant" subject to regulation beginning with 2009 model-year vehicles sold in California. Since the only way to reduce C02 output is by burning less fuel, the almost-certain result of all this will be a forced downsizing of all vehicles — most especially SUVs, which weigh more than passenger cars and usually have large six and eight-cylinder engines. Whether you accept the idea of human-caused global warming induced by carbon dioxide (a far-from-proved theory, incidentally) the carbon-dioxide caps on deck in California have the potential do to SUVs and large cars just what the asteroid or comet that struck the Yucatan Peninsula did to the dinosaurs 65 million years ago — total extinction. The "Ford Valdez" may turn out to have been merely the first one to fall. — Eric Peters is an automotive columnist for the Washington Times. |
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he
first of the truly mighty SUVs has fallen — mortally wounded by the
slings and arrows of political correctness. Ford Motor Co. let it slip
July 31 that the Excursion — at 19-feet and 3.5 tons the biggest
SUV ever produced by any automaker — would likely be cancelled after
the 2003 model year. 
