Just a sacred house
Ford and Volkswagen? For those who missed it, that may seem a somewhat unexpected marriage, but these two car manufacturers announced a fairly extensive collaboration a long time ago. This includes commercial vehicles and EVs, the latter being Ford EVs for the European market that are based on the MEB platform that Volkswagen has been using for years for its electric models.
Highlights
- Explorer with sloping roofline
- Own nose and ass
- Last Ford on MEB basis
The first fruit of this collaboration is the Explorer, which is still between its unveiling (March 2023) and market introduction (summer 2024) due to a postponement. The electric Explorer therefore has nothing to do with the Explorer that we briefly knew in Europe as a plug-in hybrid, except for that name and some design elements. Thanks to spy images, we know that an electric Ford is being developed based on this Explorer. It is very similar to the Explorer in many respects, but is primarily distinguished by a shorter, sloping roof and a flatter rear window. That’s right: this is what some brands call a coupe SUV, a car in the style of the Skoda Enyaq Coupé and the Volkswagen ID5.
Unlike those models, the new Ford will also differ in other areas from the car on which it is based. It gets a different nose, with horizontal headlights that apparently consist of two units per side. A horizontal taillight bar replaces the electric Explorer’s vertical American Explorer-based lights. So it will be clearly different all around, but dimensions, flanks and perhaps also the interior reveal that it is actually the same car. Underneath the skin we find many similarities with the Volkswagens ID4 and ID5, and of course the Skoda Enyaq. Although Ford has not yet officially communicated much about the Explorer, we expect battery packs of 52 and 77 kWh, powers of 170, 286 and 340 hp (all-wheel drive) and a driving range that, at best, exceeds 500 kilometers. What applies to the Explorer also applies to its smoother brother.
Ford Capri (Illustration: Larson)
Four round headlights
Will that brother really be called ‘Capri’? There are indications for that. First of all, Ford has a knack for recycling model names. This happened with the name Explorer, but previously also with Mustang (Mach-E) and Puma. A second clue is the fact that Ford has registered the names ‘Escort’ and ‘Capri’ in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, almost exactly the markets where we can expect the new EVs. Then there is also the design of the new coupe SUV. In addition to that coupe shape, which the original Capri of course also had, the new EV also seems to refer to the Capri of yesteryear with its headlights. Each headlight unit has two LED arcs at the top and bottom, which give the impression that there are four round light units in total. Certain vintages of the original Capri also had such a front. So don’t be surprised if you can soon buy a Ford Capri again, but in the form of an electric SUV with a smoothly sloping roofline.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl