Ford Explorer NBX - Mountain Drive

With a few days in Colorado Springs behind us, several pounds heavier and a little less enamored with turkey, my girlfriend and I scooted west and north on State Route 24 toward Wilkerson Pass. It was a bright and absurdly crisp morning. We passed 67 South just west of Woodland Park, upon which a few miles would have us in Cripple Creek, a backwoods gold production boomtown from the early 1900s. Edging north toward Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin, the cozy Explorer (outside thermometer: 12F) was then pointed up 9 North. We stopped ourselves to take a meander through sadly commercialized downtown Breck, a puzzle of real estate offices, souvenirs storefronts and overpriced "mountain" cuisine. You can still find the history here, and it's worth looking, but it'll take a few hours with a bulldozer scraping away T-shirts and silly hats. Don't even ask about the housing prices. Now depressed, Interstate 70 led us west, right to the front door of Copper Mountain. This was a happier moment.


You can ride Copper or Breckenridge back to back, and personal opinion could go either way. Breck has the name, and the trail selection. Copper has the terrain, with huge real estate and some excellent bowls. Both are worth your time. Copper has better early-season snow, in my humble opinion, so I usually wind up there prior to the Christmas holiday. Buy your lift tickets in advance for the best deal, preferably wrapped in package with your room rental. There's usually a good discount to be had if you grind the nice salesperson on the phone. Then cross your fingers for the white stuff. Fortunately, we'd been blessed.

NBX Style
Ford's Explorer didn't mind where we went. At this point, we had a thick layer of snow crud and mud all over the thing. This was a combination of the Colorado DOT's potash and salt de-freeze mix, iced over with a slick mud-based substance thrown up on dirt roads by the BFGoodrich tires. The feature list our Explorer NBX arrived with demonstrated repeatedly how well Ford had thought out its audience. Down to the deep-well floor mats and imperceptible torque transfer within the AdvanceTrac center diff, we were constantly pleased.


Features? A well-balanced sound system is a must for loooong drives (even if Telluride had only been 12 hours from San Diego), and the multiple-disc CD changer was a treat if you don't feel like changing discs once an hour. Like supportive seats? Lots of "chuck it in the back" space? The interior continued to prove impressive, with assembly quality above what some previous Explorer experiences had led us to expect. Intelligent nooks and crannies for the bits and pieces that go along with preparedness and drivability do this Ford justice.


Ford has come a long way from the early days of the SUV where function still meant everything, and their attention to real-world design and the usability of things is unmatched by other domestic corporate offerings (though still behind the near-ridiculous exactness delivered by the likes of VW or Honda). Not a truck anymore, the Explorer, now built with limited dependence on other vehicles for parts bin support, has an interior that can be called "sorted." It's cozy, going great lengths to deny the size and bearing of this truly large vehicle (more than 4300 lbs. and 190 inches long by 72 inches tall and wide), and approachable, easily used within 9/10th of its functional ideal. You feel at home in here, almost immediately, and that contributed to the overall sense of appreciation we came away with whenever stepping from the vehicle. It was a good truck, err, wagon. There you go, Ford's new slogan: Explorer—really a nice wagon, but doing an excellent job of being like the truck it once was.