(first posted 10/10/2017) As the 1997 model year was unveiled in the October 1996 issue of Automobile Magazine, it was clear that trucks were big business at Ford Motor Company. In fact, the bigger the better, as the ’97 Expedition lumbered onto the market to rake in profits from hungry American SUV buyers looking to “super size” their rides. Good thing too, as Ford needed all the financial help it could get.
The mid-1990s were surprisingly tough times for Ford Motor Company. After an impressive resurrection in the 1980s led by vehicles like the “just right” Taurus/Sable mid-size cars, Ford once again started losing its way, with expensive and often misguided product programs. The bottom line naturally suffered, but there was one salvation: trucks, trucks and more trucks. For 1997, just 36% of Ford Division sales were cars: the rest were pickups, vans and SUVs. Ford had clearly decided to double down where the big profits roamed, and well, who really needed cars that much anyway?
There’s little doubt that Ford missed the mark with the overly-ovoid Taurus and its fish-mouthed Sable sibling, and they lost what had been a pre-eminent position in mid-size sedans. The softer, rounder lines of the F-Series, however, were no issue at all, as the big pickup continued as the best selling vehicle in America.
Sadly, while we did get “New Edge” design on a number of Ford products in the years after 1997, the Lincoln Sentinel never saw the light of day beyond just being a design concept. That’s a shame, as the crisp detailing looked very good on a big, black Lincoln sedan.
The revamped Escort was one of the few bright spots for cars at Ford Division in 1997, with sales for the much-improved small car climbed smartly, increasing 141%. Unfortunately for Ford, a lot of those buyers may have simply chosen the new Escort over the more-expensive Contour with its too-small back seat, as sales for the “World Car” tumbled 57% from 1996. Taurus carnage continued as well, with sales dropping 9% even with more extensive discounting. Mustang was down 19%, Thunderbird was off 10% and Probe decreased 44% as it neared the end of its life. The only other Ford carline to post an increase was the ancient Crown Victoria, which rose 7%. The new Expedition was a hit however, and sales for the other pickup and SUV models were either flat or off slightly (-4% to -5%) from the year prior.
Lincoln had a tough year. The Continental dropped 28%, Town Car dropped 12% and Mark VIII dropped 11% compared to 1996. There just wasn’t much news, the products seemed tired, and the competition for luxury buyers was fierce.
Mercury did better, as sales rose 4%, primarily due to the arrival of the Ford Explorer clone, aka the Mercury Mountaineer, as well as the well-received updated Tracer (+396%, though off a very low base). Grand Marquis also saw sales surge 23% (even though there was still no black-on-black DeSade package) and the big Panther remained the best selling Mercury. The worst seller in the line? The Mercury “Mistake” (Mystique), showing that Ford’s “World Car” definitely wasn’t competitive in Mercury showrooms.
So how did the revamped 1997 Ford Motor Company line-up go over with buyers? Let’s have a look, starting with the Ford Division:
| Ford Division | 3,196,984 |
| F-Series Pickup | 746,111 |
| Taurus | 398,802 |
| Explorer | 383,852 |
| Escort | 353,504 |
| Ranger Pickup | 298,796 |
| Expedition | 214,524 |
| Windstar | 205,536 |
| E-Series Van | 186,690 |
| Crown Victoria | 123,833 |
| Mustang | 110,250 |
| Contour | 79,951 |
| Thunderbird | 78,314 |
| Probe | 16,821 |
| Aerostar | Data N/A |
| Aspire | Data N/A |
Here were the 1997 results at Lincoln:
| Lincoln | 153,143 |
| Town Car | 104,533 |
| Continental | 32,245 |
| Mark VIII | 16,365 |
Clearly the tarted-up Ford Expedition, to be named the Lincoln Navigator, couldn’t come soon enough… That early 1998 beast did improve sales, though it ultimately damaged Lincoln’s credibility as a legitimate, sophisticated luxury brand (and Cadillac would soon catch the same disease too). It is ironic to consider that just 20 years prior, Lincoln had introduced the tarted-up Versailles, clearly nothing more than a Ford Granada with different grille, tail lights and interior upholstery, but the car was a complete flop–buyers saw through the veneer and rejected the poseur. Fast Forward to 1997, and Lincoln did the same thing to a Ford product, but this time it would sell like hotcakes–proof positive that buyers would snap up anything, so long as it was an SUV.
And then there was Mercury, soldiering along but not still deeply in the shadow of the Ford Division.
| Mercury | 467,318 |
| Grand Marquis | 127,949 |
| Sable | 114,238 |
| Tracer | 65,912 |
| Villager | 55,168 |
| Mountaineer | 45,363 |
| Cougar | 35,367 |
| Mystique | 23,321 |
So 1997 was decent but not spectacular for the Blue Oval, and in the short-term, the extreme focus on cheap-to-make, high profit truck based SUVs seemed smart. At least until those Firestone tires started to blow…
My strongest memory of new 1997 Fords was the new Club Wagon. The article states that one would be hard pressed to notice the thorough re-working – uhhhh, not if one owned one of the 1992-96 models. An uglified grille outside and the total cheapening of the interior which resulted in the loss of so many clever little touches that made my ’94 model such a delight to live with. Little did I know that this disease was working its way through the entire Ford lineup.
I also remember the intro of the Expedition. The thing always seemed wrong-sized to me. I thought that Chevy had pretty perfectly defined the sizes for a big SUV with the Suburban and the Tahoe. The Expedition fit in the middle, a place that seemed to me to have all the disadvantages of either Chevy with none of the advantages. Plus the thing seemed so high off the ground, unnecessarily so. As a guy naturally disposed to vehicles like these, the Expedition never did a thing for me until the extended version finally came along about 10 years later.
The Expedition fit pretty close to the Tahoe in size, and the Tahoe has usually outsold the Suburban by a wide margin. Ford seemed to hit the sweet spot of the market with the early Expedition and they were rewarded with good sales, despite the well established GM players.
Garageability likely plays into this to an extent. The garage bay reserved for my tow vehicle will not accommodate the current extended Expedition EL. The added cargo space in the EL is impressive, but the length of it, and the Suburban, is a lot of vehicle to account for at home, and when parking and driving in tight spaces.
Re garages, that was exactly my impression, but I suppose Suburbans, dually crew cabs, etc., are still saleable since many American suburbanites prefer to use their garages for storage instead of their intended purpose. Our neighbor has a 3-car garage, yet still parks his Tundra on the driveway.
Agree, the Expedition was the right size for a lot of people. More cargo space than the Tahoe in a somewhat more manageable size than the Suburban.
My mom got an Expedition only after careful measurement of our garage.
Even then, you couldn’t walk around it if the garage door was shut.
It took a lot of strung tennis balls and homemade wheelstops and assorted markers to get it right every day.
A Tahoe didn’t have enough seats and a Suburban would have been too long, making us one of the rare exceptions that needed that exact size.
Man, what a ponderous thing to drive.
I guess my “size radar” was based on my sister buying a Tahoe. It was wider than the XJ Cherokee she replaced, but didn’t seem like it had all that much more room, especially if they added a rider to their family of 4. (She eventually traded into a Suburban, as did virtually every one else in kid-years in my extended family). I also saw how little cargo room there was even in a Suburban with the rear seat in use – which was why I was never tempted to ditch my Ford Club Wagon for one. The Expedition seemed to me to be a slight improvement on the Tahoe in space, but not big enough to get a really decent 3rd row for adults and some cargo area too. But sales figures don’t lie, so lots of folks must have found the Expy sized just right.
The Mexican market name for the F-150 is Lobo. I thought it was named after the wolf, but maybe it was Advanced-Design Director Claude instead.
Hmm..let’s see…oh yeah, my buddy Chris and I were thinking about going 50/50 on a 69 Miller Meteor Cadillac Hearse for $1800. But we didn’t. That’s also the year we also looked at a 68 Bonneville convertable (that was not for sale) that was a 3-speed column shift manual that I knew used Ford’s 3.03 transmission. It ran good too but had been left out in the weather with no top on for years. Found out later only 200 68 Bonnevilles of all body styles had the manual tranny. Doubt many were convertables. And my folks bought a 97 F150 that they still own. I was driving my 73 2dr Maverick. Other than that nothing automotive took place in my life that year.
I bought a new 1997 F-150. As usual, I ordered the vehicle exactly as I wanted it.
My order took much longer than I anticipated and I was getting pushy and anxious by the time it finally showed up six months after my deposit at the Ford dealer in Clinton, Wisconsin.
Ford was pumping them out and the demand was high for the completely new F-150. I think an XLT, long bed, automatic would have been easily available. But I ordered a stripper XL, short bed, manual, V-8 and they did not build too many like that.
I liked the looks of the Expedition as it was clearly closely related to my F-150.
I always thought the Escort wagon facelift looked better than the round-body sedans and they should’ve given the hatchbacks and old square-body sedan similar facelifts instead.
The ZX2 coupe lingered as a fleet special forever but seemed to suffer a real sales drop compared to the 3-door hatch it replaced – at least in the mid ’90s such a move made more sense than when Ford repeated it a decade later and the ’08-11 Focus coupes were salesproof even during the ’08 gas crunch while the hatchbacks were sorely missed.
Didn’t suffer a sales drop, and did well, until the Focus ZX3 overtook it.
Lincoln sales were very telling in the face of large and luxury car buyers switching to larger sport utilities in droves. Ford, with its hyper-popular Explorer, knew this better than anybody. While the Lincoln Town Car was treated to a major revision in 1998, the concurrently introduced 1998 Lincoln Navigator SUV was a timely save to the market’s increased indifference to the Town Car as anything but a livery vehicle.
I was in college during these years and remember the Dean of Students purchasing a ZX2 for his commuter. He was an extremely conservative white haired straight laced gentleman and the car was white with the ZX2 badging highlighted in a brilliant blue. The car was so completely out of character for him, I assumed that he was a Ford loyalist who made some sort of a screaming deal on a car that he cared not two wits about as long as it fulfilled the duties of his commute.
Ah, the last Thunderbird as a Personal Luxury Coupe (with 4 seats)… It was the fall of ’97, and I was suddenly living alone. I needed a reliable car to replace my aging ’88 5.0L V8 T-Bird (236K on the clock, and starting to leave me calling AAA for stupid stuff… otherwise, it still ran great). While I was reticent to purchase another 3.8L powered ‘Bird (having owned an ’83 T-Bird so equipped), I did so anyway because I got an awesome end of year deal on the very car pictured below…..
….and then I read THIS article. Sadly, my beloved favorite vehicles were going away. Sorry I can’t find this Baltimore Sun article’s continuation, but it went on to sat that the Thunderbird had become “Long in the Tooth”. Ouch!
I always wonder – why did they decide to bring back the Thunderbird a few years later (the two-seat, retro, DEW98 version) if they had decided the MN12 was a lost cause instead of starting work on the next Mustang? Between 2002 and 2004, the Mustang was still on a Fox derivative, whereas the Thunderbird was two “all-new” platforms ahead!
Perhaps the MN12 platform was too big for a Mustang. I’m not sure, but that’s a good question, MT. They refreshed the SN95 for the ‘Edge Styling’ for those latter ‘Stangs… perhaps to gear everyone up for the Retro-Stang look “S-197” platform, if they were even working on that platform at the time. I’m sure someone here will know.
Keep in mind the DEW98 chassis is a very heavily modified basis for the S197 chassis. The 05+ Mustangs are quite large as a consequence, lucky for it the other two retro ponycars to follow were compromised in similar fashions. Of note, the DEW98 isn’t far off the MN12 as far as hardpoints go as well, MN12 Tbirds were actually used as mules for the DEW98 suspension/driveline development during the 90s.
Thanks for the intel, Matt! ;o)
Interesting. I knew Ford was decidedly a truck/SUV manufacturer by this point, but I never knew that ratio was already skewed that heavily trucks versus cars. I’ve ridden in most of the FordMoCo products of this era, and while interior and exterior designs were generally pleasing, cheap-looking and feeling plastic interiors with exposed screws around the radio and HVAC panels is what always sticks out in my mind.
Screws are Good: 1) You can take them off to get at what’s behind them; 2) the manufacturer didn’t Follow the Herd in using cheaper, more fragile slap-on plastic fasteners instead! And screw covers add expense & hassle for both installer & maintainer.
So exposed screws are a rational, & therefore Beautiful Thing.
Can’t disagree with that. I miss exposed screws.
Not to mention those clips lead to all the creaks and squeaks many 90s-00s era cars are often criticized for.
Having said that there were some jarring screw locations, especially as interior designs became organic.
Nothing captures how unattractive the 90s were compared to previous decades better than the Lincoln Mark VIII. The Mark II was an instant classic, the Mark III a genre-creating masterpiece, the Mark IV and Mark V held their own and then there was the Mark VII an 80s rockstar.
Sure the Mark VIII was powerful, had IRS and a wind-cheating shape but it lacked the presence that its predecessors had. Products like the BMW 6-series and Porsche 911 made similar mistakes. This isn’t a criticism of Ford as much as it is an observation of the obsession to go for specs and numbers, in some circles, at the expense of personality. The VIII checked all the boxes but looked like a blob and felt heavy to drive. What happened to the product guys at these companies? Oh yeah they were all at Chrysler or working on trucks.
PS — Those first generation “pregnant” airbag covers for the steering wheels ruined most new car interiors in the 90s, especially at GM.
+1 I consider this period the point of no return for car styling, where no matter the car’s actual role in the marketplace must conform to the standards of the greater fleet, Porsche is a great example, 30 years of the same 1964 shape, right through the 964, but it just had to get more organic and melted with the 993 with the jellybean sedans of the time.
The mark VIII is the same way, and I’m probably the biggest MN12/FN10 enthusiast on the site saying that, the VII managed to evoke that Mark III presence while still managing to look competitive and even forward thinking, it was never a stellar sales success, but neither was the timeless 61 era Continental, they were designs that transcended times and fit the brand to a tee. The Mark VIII was a massive shift, it wasn’t necessarily unattractive as a product but it may as well have been a refreshed Thunderbird for 93, there just was little Lincolnness to it, same could be said for the 95-02 Continental.
Glad you said that Matt because I know some of my favorite posters admire the Mark VIII or have one. Just saying you would like it a lot more if it still looked like a Mark. The 993 got a little more rounded and I don’t like it as much as an 80s Carrera but it still had the original 911 roof, doors, door frames, glass, drip channels and door handles.
Classic touches like that are arguably more “911” than the air-cooled engine. The guys at Porsche who wanted to continue the 911 indefinitely (perhaps even with a water-cooled engine) had one tough sell to the boss. Make a huge investment to tool up for higher production — they needed that to stay cost competitive — and make an old car.
Very hard argument to make so in 1999 we got the 996, a blob car with great specs. Remember those flat sides? That was to “fix” the aerodynamic problem caused by the bulging rear fenders on previous generation 911s. The flat sides were 1000% more efficient but looked like hell. So what happened? They added back the flares but the car was never the same. Nice but never the same.
Do it right the first time and have it last a long time. We stopped seeing that after the 80s. I know there are regs to deal with but you can usually spend your way around them, if you want to.
I don’t agree–and not just because I owned one. The reason I owned one was that I instantly fell in love with the car the first time I saw the design in 1992, and that stayed with me. A little too organic? In retrospect, perhaps. But I think that they tried to give it the “Lincolnness” you spoke of, perhaps not going quite far enough.
The stand-up grille, which was one of the two stylistic ties between the III and the VII, just would not have worked in the 90’s. Period. The aero look and slippery shapes were in, and I can’t think of any way they would have made that work. The only car in the entire Ford lineup that still had an upright nose was the Town Car, and that only worked due to the squared-off nature of the entire shape. So they gave it a chromed, vertical-bar grille, just laid back. And that grille with the slim headlamps was one of the things that drew me in about the car. (The ’97 refresh suffered in this department–while the slim lamps of the ’93-’96 were quite attractive, their light output was wretched. So they had to get larger. But the bulbousness of the new ones, plus the cartoonish nature of the grille and the “power bulge” given to the hood for no good reason, were not an improvement.)
At the other end, the stylistic tie was the continental “hump’ which harkened all the way back to the Mark II, serving there as a tie to the separately cased spares on the Mark I. Some people argued that it should be given the heave-ho completely, but it survived in a somewhat subdued form. While I would have preferred a bit more definition, I think they did a relatively good job blending it into the slippery rear panel. And I liked the full-width tails quite a bit; the IV had horizontal-emphasis taillamps plus the V, VI, and VII had prominent horizontal reflectors.
The overall shape of the car was a smoothed-out version of the VII; the window arrangement was similar, as was the overall roofline. I think where the VIII’s design really falls down is the sides of the car. They’re just….boring. Too much expanse of sheemetal without anything to break it up, and the nearly-concave contouring didn’t really help matters anywhere. The side moldings had a slim chrome insert, but that wasn’t nearly enough, and the LSC deleted even that. Call me a traditionalist, but the car needed another touch or three of chrome *somewhere* on the sides. Door pulls, perhaps? And the lack of any sort of wheel lip was also IMHO a mistake. The wheel openings just kind of *appear* without any preamble.
Enough of my rambling stylistic criticism for now–but I think that, given the constraints of the full-bore aero theme that overtook Ford in the early 90’s, they did a pretty damn good job. The ’97 refresh made the car easier to drive at night, and the neon taillamp insert was pretty cool, but overall it wasn’t an improvement.
“The stand-up grille, which was one of the two stylistic ties between the III and the VII, just would not have worked in the 90’s. Period. The aero look and slippery shapes were in, and I can’t think of any way they would have made that work.”
I agree but they could do that now. The more upright front end would work well with modern pedestrian protection requirements. It’s time to look at longer hoods and more upright windshields again, that’s my point. And yes the biggest benefit is for styling. I would never in a million years bring back the hump.
The aero look and slippery shapes were in, and I can’t think of any way they would have made that work
This in a nutshell is why Lincoln has largely been a floundering also ran in the Luxury segment from the 90s to date, completely lacking cohesive identity, which they quite successfully built with the stand up grilles(for better or worse). Lincoln’s only real hit in the intervening years was the Navigator, the antithesis of slippery and aero. Perhaps pressing on with the established design language would have created a disconnect with the rest of the Ford lineup, but is that a bad thing? Rolls and Bentley stuck with their upright look through the 90s, and really the 89-97 Town car was an excellent contemporary execution, before succumbing to a merely sleeker Crown Vic for 98.
Which brings me to the Mark VIII, a sleeker Thunderbird for 93. Don’t get me wrong in my critique of it, I don’t find it unattractive, in fact there are some cool touches, but the tire hump literally is all the Lincoln in it. Without it could have easily been passed as an extensive refresh of the Thunderbird, and things like those full width taillights actually were used by the Thunderbird historically. The Mark had vertical main taillights longer than it didn’t(I don’t like the IV so I’m biased there), and the reflector sections on later ones weren’t particularly prominent. The VIII making not only the leap but to place those in prominence, but also place them high up on the trunklid just has the net effect of making the spare tire hump even more absurd and clearly superfluous – as a kid I could actually believe every Lincoln had a tire mounted there like on the III, but I just knew the VIII was purely fake. The original front end I don’t have much criticism for, other than the grille/headlamp/bumper transition is clunky.
The only one of the new Fords that I specifically remember as a ’97 intro is the F-150. Aero styling, 17″ wheels, OHC engines in a truck, and then the weird 7 lug wheels on the F250 seemed hugely novel at the time. Of course, the Expedition was a big hit as well, though I’d forgotten that it was a ’97 introduction. Ditto for the restyled Escort, though I see one every day as our next door neighbor has a wagon of that gen as a daily driver. Overall, not a future classic year for any Fords, in my opinion. Though a ’97 Aerostar might be a future CC, perhaps.
I’m not a truck guy, but at the time, I recall being confused. These trucks are probably extremely rare now, but when they first restyled the F-150, a short time later, the 250 came out. It looked like a beefed up 150. And then, in very short order, the 250 morphed into a slightly lesser looking F-350. What the heck happened there? Was the F-150’s basic frame not “Ford Tough” enough for the heavier duty truck? It would seem that if you had one of these rare F-250(s), you’d have a Curbside Classic indeed.
For a while the “beefy F150=F250” coexisted with the SUPER DUTY version as the “non-HD 250”. To further confuse maters at one point you could buy an F150 with a 7700 GVWR and 7 LUG axles.
The F-150 7700 was actually what replaced the old “light-duty” F-250 after 1999. There was no mechanical difference between it and the LD F-250. After 2003, this was known as the F-150 Heavy-Duty Payload Package.
In 1997, you had:
New F-150 and light-duty F-250, OBS heavy-duty F-250 and F-350.
In 1998, you had:
F-150 and light-duty F-250. The Super Duty line was released early in 1998 for the 1999 MY.
In 1999, you had:
F-150 and light-duty F-250, new Super Duty F-250/350/450/550.
After 1999, you had:
F-150, F-150 7700, Super Duty.
I like my good old F150 Heritage but if I could pluck a Ford truck from that era and bring it to the present just by snapping my fingers, I’d like a F150 7700. There was just something about a truck that looked like any other until you peered closely at the badge and saw the “7700” tucked under the “F150”.
You could still pick it out by the 7-lug wheels. I’d go for a newer Heavy-Duty Payload Package model, myself. Mostly because it means I get to have the SuperCab with an 8′ bed:
The division of 3/4-tons into high- and low-GVWR models actually dates back to at least the mid-’70s, but only Ford (and to a lesser extent, Chevy) ever made a mechanical distinction between them. Today, the low-GVWR versions would occupy the same space as a modern half-ton (Class 2a): GVWR below 8500 lbs. (usually around 7800), while the heavy-duty 3/4-tons were between 8500 and 9000 (10000 # was reserved for “one-ton” trucks).
Between 1980 and 1996, the F-250 light duty and heavy-duty were primarily distinguished by their choice of engines. LDs came with the 300, 302, or 351. HDs came with the same engines as the F-350: 300, 351, 400 (later the 460), and diesel (6.9/7.3). This distinction would continue after the 1997 models–LD F-250 was 4.6 or 5.4 V8, Super Duty F-250 was 5.4, 6.8 V10, or diesel.
As far as I can tell, there’s no outward way to distinguish these older 3/4 tons from each other–even though the light duty had a semi-float rear axle, and the HD a full float, both had 8-lug wheels. Transmission options on the LD were shared with the F-150 (3-speed manual, 4-speed manual with or without OD, AOD, C6 auto), while the HD had the same two options as the F-350 (4-speed manual, C6 auto).
GM also had differences between its light- and heavy-duty 3/4 tons , but similarly, they were mostly buried in the back of the brochure. The light-duty 2500 (option code C5Z) had the 4.3 V6 standard with 305 and 350 V8s as options, while the heavy-duty (C6P) had the 350 standard with 454 and diesel as options. Mechanically, there was actually slightly more difference between the two than with Fords: light-duties used the 1500’s semi-floating rear axle with six lugs(!), while HDs had a full-floating eight-lug axle.
After 1997, the difference between light and heavy F-250s was easier to spot–the F-250 shared the F-150’s body but had a thicker frame, heavier axles, heavier springs, the infamous 7-lug wheels, LT tires, and a transmission cooler, and was only available on the 139″ WB (RCLB or SuperCab/6.5′ bed). The heavy-duty, of course, was the new Super Duty model. After 1999, the light-duty F-250 was renamed the F-150 7700 (as seen on the tailgate) to avoid confusion with the Super Duty.
From 2004 onward, the F-250 7700 was renamed the F-150 Heavy Duty Payload Package and only made available on regular or SuperCab/8′ bed models with the 5.4 V8–in fact, all SuperCab/8′ bed models from 2004-2010 were HDPP models. They still had 7-lug wheels, but the wheels looked identical to the base model XL steel rims because the lugs were hidden behind the hubcaps.
With the 2011 engine changeup, the HDPP was reconfigured slightly. New HDs had either the 3.5 EcoBoost or 5.0 V8 with a 3.73 limited slip, 9.75″ rear axle. The old steelies were replaced by aluminum wheels on XLT models. In 2012, the HDPP package was expanded to SuperCrew/6.5′ bed models and Lariat trim. On 2015+ models, the 7-lug wheels were replaced by heavy 6-lugs.
A comparable model to the 97+ F-250/F-150 HD would be the Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra 2500 non-HD made from 1999-2006. It was even less distinguishable from the HD model, mostly because Chevy has always used the same bodies for light and heavy-duty pickups, but there are differences. The light-duty 2500 had the same lower hood as the standard 1500, and only came with the 6.0 gas V8 and 4L80E automatic transmission. Rear axle was still semi-float, but eight lugs this time around. The 2500HD had the tall HD hood to fit the 8.1 or diesel (6.0 was standard), heavier frame shared with the 3500, full floating rear axle, heavier springs, everything you’d expect.
Chevy’s 2500 LD model was identical to the 1500HD model also offered at the same time. How do we know this? The 1500HD was only made as a crew cab/6.5′ bed model, while the 2500 LD was only RCLB and extended cab/8′ or 6.5′ bed. The 1500HD was not offered for 2004 only, which was also the only year the 2500 was available in crew cab/6.5′ bed config.
(If anyone reading this finds anything they think may be inaccurate or just plain wrong, they’re probably right. I’ve just tried to consolidate everything I know about light-duty 3/4-tons in one post.)
They didn’t build many but at least for 1999 you could get a silverado 2500 LD with the 5.3. I had a friend with one of the first to show up on a dealer lot. 2500 new body style reg cab long bed 4×4 with a 5.3. I never realized it was an odd ball until years later.
Pretty clairvoyant of Automobile magazine to unveil 1997 models in 1986… 😉
Haha, well David E. Davis was an impressive automotive visionary 🙂
Thanks for catching the typo, I made the fix.
🙂
No Problem, was trying to have a little fun with it. No offense intended.
This generation of the Expedition (especially upper trim levels) is the best looking generation of the Expedition. I see ton’s of them on the road out here in the U.S car capital LA area, with most in pretty good shape!
Although it had a host of problems, I still have a soft spot for the poor old Contour. Rented one once and enjoyed it much more than I expected. Small inside, sure, but great handling. It’s a shame Ford couldn’t make it work from a sales standpoint.
The first generation Ford Expedition (especially the Eddie Bauer trim) are among one of my all time favorite SUV’s built in the past 20 years, there are a lot of them in good to very good shape where I’m at, I find it hard to believe that the first generation Ford Expedition’s are nearly 20 years old now.
That long bed SuperCab F-150 in Portofino Blue is one sharp (not to mention rare) truck.
I had a 96 escort LX wagon in bright purple with a 5 speed manual.
I drove a few 97-2000 escorts. They seemed slower and ran rougher than mine.
I wasn’t impressed. It just felt like a half assed attempt Mine didn’t feel like a penalty box. The newer ones did ……. or was that just me?
Not just you. I had a ’96 Escort wagon and loved it, it was a jewel compared to what came after. Inlaws had a ’97 and it wasn’t as nice, much cheaper interior and didn’t seem as refined.
The ’97 Contour had a short model year, the 98 got tweaks to styling and added the SVT. Brought out in spring ’97. Could be why the sales #’s are lower?
Whatever happened to the Lincoln Sentinel? That should have been put into production immediately! It’s gorgeous!
That show car pushmobile was for sale about 10 years ago, but not sure after that. It spent years in a Lincoln showroom, I think. I was disappointed that it was in no way drivable.
Geez, they didn’t miss an opportunity to call the Mark VIII ugly, did they? I count no less than three mentions. Needless to say, I heartily disagree, though I feel the changes for ’97 were not an improvement visually. Behind the wheel at night, on the other hand, the new headlamps would have been greatly appreciated, as the ones fitted to the ’93-’96 models were (to borrow a phrase) about as effective as a candle in a hurricane.
Of course my current car is a ’97 Crown Victoria, not that they had much to say about it. But then again, what was there to say? It was basically a ’96 which was basically a ’95. Time and changes run slowly in the Panther universe…though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I doubt they had any idea that the “last resort for fans of full-size, V8-powered, rear wheel drive sedans” would last another 14 years with only a conservative reskin for ’98 and some significant chassis work in ’03. But the engine, and basically the entire interior save for a few instrument panel tweaks? Identical.
I find the Mark VII to be more desirable than it’s replacement, probably because it had more brougham in it. I drove a test drove a used Mark VII a couple of years ago, and it reminded me of my ’84 Cougar. The curved F150 looked very modern at the time, but they haven’t seemed to age that well. For some reason the Expedition seems to have aged quite well in my eyes. The Explorer was a hit. I bought a ’97 5.0 Explorer a while back and enjoyed it for a few years. I really liked driving it, the engine was similar to the GT engine used in the Mustang and LSC Lincoln. Like all SUVs of it’s time, it just didn’t get good gas mileage, I only managed around 17 mpg. on long trips at freeway speeds. I would like another mid size of larger SUV but fuel economy is still nothing to brag about.