The Ford Excursion Is a Massive SUV With a Cult Following

this is a 2000 ford excursion and it is huge a massive suv with a v10 engine designed to carry your whole family and all their stuff and tow a boat without ever breaking a sweat since the excursion was canceled more than 15 years ago used models have been in huge demand and today i'm going to review this excursion and explain why before i get started big news this excursion is currently being auctioned live on cars and bids my enthusiast car auction website this is a top of the line excursion limited with a v10 engine and only 130 000 miles which is pretty low for an excursion and you can buy it on cars and bids so when you're done watching this video click the link in the description below to check out the live auction for this ford excursion and you can bid on it and win it on cars and bids so let's talk excursion for many years chevrolet made popular full-size suvs the suburban going back decades and also the tahoe which joined in the 90s ford decided to answer with a rival the expedition in the late 1990s and it was very popular and well received but then they decided to take things to the next level of huge the excursion unlike the suburban and expedition the excursion was based on ford's largest pickup truck the f-series super duty and it really could do it all it had room for your whole family and a huge cargo area behind the seats for all their stuff and it really could tow just about anything you wanted but rising gas prices and a reputation for massive excess killed the excursion after the 2005 model year and only one generation and then something interesting and rather unpredictable happened demand started to increase after the excursion left the market ford didn't really replace it with anything and frankly neither did anyone else and that meant that families who actually did want to take the whole family and all their stuff on a road trip while towing an rv or a horse trailer didn't really have any other options and so used excursions are in tremendously high demand and today i'm going to review this one and show you why first i'll take you on a tour of this excursion and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the excursion by discussing its best feature the thing that most people know it for and that would be its capability ford offered four different powertrain options throughout the excursion's life there was a powered v8 there was a gas powered v10 like this and there were two different diesels originally a 7.3 liter diesel v8 which was replaced by a 6 liter diesel v8 now the 6 liter had the most power and torque so you would think that is the engine you want but over the years since this truck came out owners have discovered that the 6 liter had a lot of reliability problems and solving them is pretty expensive both in terms of time and parts so a lot of people gravitate towards the 7.3 liter turbo diesel v8 but those are getting hard to find they often have high miles they've been used for towing and those trucks are getting worn out this was the second best engine the gas v10 a massive powertrain for a massive vehicle this was a 6.8 liter v10 it only has 310 horsepower but 425 pound-feet of torque and these are known for being pretty reliable but frankly i think it's just insane that it has a v10 when you think about v10s you think lamborghini gallardo lamborghini huracan bmw m5 dodge viper but here you have a v10 and a family suv but it was a massive family suv so having that big v10 kind of made sense one good indication of the excursion's huge size is the rear doors which are full sized every other suvs rear doors have to sort of curve to go around the wheel arch but the excursion was so massive that it had full-sized rear doors that weren't interrupted by the wheel arch and back you can see the door line goes straight down and doesn't even intersect the wheel arch one of the only regular non-limo suvs ever made with a full-sized rear door that's how big it is and behind that rear door you have seats and lots of them you have a second row in here of course which is pretty big big enough for an adult to sit comfortably no problem you also have a third row in here of course you do the excursion is huge and so you'd expect third row seating but the unexpected part is the cargo area which is massive you rarely see a cargo area this big behind a third row i've seen two row suvs with smaller cargo areas than this but the excursion was so huge that it had three rows of seats and still a massive cargo area in addition this was several inches longer than a chevy suburban which is often cited as being like undrivably massively huge like the archetypal huge suv well this was huger and since we're talking cargo area let's talk quirks and features of the cargo area probably the quirkiest thing about this aside from its massive size is getting into the cargo area you don't just have a tailgate that you open up instead you have a half tailgate that opens like a normal tailgate does and then you have dutch doors that open out from the center to individual ones and that's how you access the cargo area in the excursion you may be wondering why why didn't they just give it a normal tailgate and that's because of towing they knew a lot of people would be towing with this and if you have a full-size tailgate sometimes you can't open the tailgate while your trailer is in place because the tailgate will hit the trailer but if you have a half-sized tailgate you should be able to open it in all situations and then you can still access the cargo area even if you have a trailer in place so dutch doors and a half tailgate that's how you get in the back interesting now once you're in the back of the excursion a couple of interesting things for one you have a power point here a cigarette lighter style outlet which you can use to power stuff of course if you're tailgating or whatever you also have the spare tire back here which was an old school suv feature that is now gone this might have been one of the last suvs to have the spare in back as late as 2005 but it did taking up some of your cargo room for the spare tire one interesting practicality drawback back here is folding down the third row seat because this cargo area is so massive actually reaching the third row seat to fold it down is pretty difficult you have to get very far into the cargo area to do it it's a lot harder than most three row vehicles where the seat is closer to you and of course this came out in the days before power folding third row seats so there's a little latch you have to pull in order to fold it down now when you do have it folded down you can see it's not completely flat back here if you wanted a fully flat cargo area you had to remove the third row seat but obviously with it folded down that gives you even more cargo space for larger items it's a pretty big cargo area back here but anyway next up let's move on to getting into the third row seat which is pretty easy a lot of suvs from this area with complex latches and levers to get into the third row but not here you just move this latch forward and then push the seat and you're good to go and you can climb into the back and once you're back here you discover a shockingly roomy third row seat i've climbed into a lot of third rows from the tiny mercedes glb all the way on up this is the roomiest third row seat i have ever been in in any car i would be totally comfortable in this third row on a long drive it is shocking to me how much room this car has in the interior especially considering how massive the cargo area is you just have room for days in the excursion and when you're in the excursion everything is just bigger all of it probably the most ridiculous bigger thing in here is the overhead center console a lot of cars they have a center console overhead from the driver and passenger where you can like stick your sunglasses and it controls the sunroof sometimes that extends to the second row for like climate controls in the excursion the overhead center console runs the whole length of the vehicle extending all the way from the windshield to above the third row and it is absolutely massive you can see it just has controls for all the seats and all sorts of different overheads that are console items this overhead center console is like the length of a mini just by itself running from the front of the car to the very back now the overhead center console in the third row has its own screen that drops down you can just pop this open here the screen drops down or you can use these little controls to adjust like the brightness the volume that sort of thing that is a pretty impressive feature a lot of cars had a second row entertainment system but the excursion has one for the third row they figured if you were getting a vehicle as big as the excursion you were gonna be using the third row and so they gave your third row passengers the drop down screen at least in the high-end excursion limited like this one you also had some other nice amenities back here you had two cup holders one over on each side so you could store your drinks you had a little storage cubby which included a charge point for devices back here and you even had climate vents to blow air on you these things don't seem like much by modern standards but 20-plus years ago when three-row vehicles were not really all that common these were some pretty nice touches to have now one interesting item back here you might be wondering about is what's on the back of the second row of seats you can see there's like the seat back and then there's this carpeted thing folded up connected to the seat back so what exactly is that i'll show you what that was was a feature that allowed you to have a flat load floor when you folded down the second row of seats you can see you fold down the second row you lift up the seat bottom and then you fold the seat back but the load floor isn't flat however you take off this little piece of carpeting from the back of the seat you fold it back and now you have a flat load floor now like i mentioned before the third row will not be folded flat you have to remove it for that purpose but if you do remove the third row you can fold the second row flat and then you have a truly flat massive cargo area back here basically you have a super duty pickup which this essentially was just in suv form but you can put it back to enclosed pickup truck form if that's what you want but anyway on to the other quirks and features of the second row one interesting one is there is another rear seat entertainment screen back here once again you can pop the screen down here and control it using these little buttons so there are two separate rear entertainment screens in this car for two separate rows of seats because they knew you were buying an excursion you probably were carrying a lot of kids and they all wanted to be entertained and so they gave you two separate screens which you never see in basically any car now also in the second row you can see there's a little slot up here for the remote control for the screen you can pull it out and then i guess use it to control the screen of course and also on this massive overhead center console you have climate controls back here you can adjust the air temperature the fan speed and of course exactly where the air is coming out a nice feature but not that surprising in a vehicle that was so focused on its rear seat passengers you also back here have additional controls for all the screens in this car you can see a few controls for the audio in the middle in the back of the front center console and then to the right there are hookups for whatever device you want to connect to it a dvd player or maybe more commonly back then a vcr you could plug it in here and then control it using these controls or the remote i showed you before and by the way it's worth noting even though you do have those inputs there for a device like a dvd player you also have built-in players in this car underneath the second row of seat that i'm sitting on you can see there is a vhs player under there and also a dvd player and these are hooked up to the screens in the car now i suspect these were like dealer installed options they were installed just after this car was sold new back in the day obviously since there's a vhs player but those are the features you wanted to keep your kids entertained however you could also hook up more stuff if you wanted using these little hookups behind the center console either way there was a lot of nice entertainment options in the back of the excursion and next up we move on to the front of the excursion and frankly this was a super duty it was a super duty pickup now i admit it was actually an excursion the suv version and this was the limited trim the high-end luxury version but as much disguising as ford tried to do they couldn't really hide the fact that at its core this is a super duty and pretty much everywhere you look you saw some of this utilitarian super duty feel all throughout this interior now i admit you had leather seats up here that said limited embroidered on the seat back and that made you feel nice and luxurious but on the dashboard you had like four different colors of cheap plastic you can see in the middle you have this dark brown cheap plastic and then the passenger side it's a lighter and then the door panel is lighter still and frankly i think the steering wheel is lighter than that and i don't know why they couldn't just go with one color or maybe two they couldn't get all of these plastics to match and it just looks kind of cheap and not all that well thought out also the hood latch you can see printed on there is an image of a pickup truck with its hood up because of course this hood latch and probably the entire front end was borrowed straight from the super duty trucks so they didn't bother to change that now they did add wood trim in here but it is the chintiest looking fake wood plastic you will ever see just sort of applied probably as a decal on top of whatever surfaces they put it on this was the limited with the wood trim but it really did look like a super duty and one thing i find hilarious in here is how the car kind of treats you like an idiot and tells you all sorts of stuff that were very clear without it telling you for instance the fuel door is on the left side most cars just have a little arrow next to the fuel icon in the gauge cluster this thing actually says fuel fill with an arrow to the left it actually spells it out for you in case like you've never driven an automobile before at any point in your life i also like the fact that the cd player actually says disk pointing down to the disk slot as if that wasn't clear of course we know what that is what do you think i'm going to stick in there paper it's not a shredder ridiculous of course it's for disks and same deal with the charger mounted on the dashboard you can see it says powerpoint and then you lift up this door and there's the charger but like we know it's a powerpoint you don't actually have to print it there we get what it is we've used it before maybe my very favorite though is in the center console you have this little clip here and it says clip just in case you didn't know or couldn't easily figure it out it tells you because it thinks you're stupid and that just kind of fits in with the theme all these kind of utilitarian not very nice looking luxury car feature to say clip right in the middle of the center console but it was from a truck that's just what they did i also like the owner's manual on the excursion this was a pretty expensive truck back when it was new and so many brands give you this like special owner's manual in a pouch that looks nice and has the car image on it not ford they gave you this generic looking excursion owner's manual with a generic looking steering wheel on it that doesn't even match the actual steering wheel in the excursion itself they just didn't really care all that much and by the way speaking of the owner's manual page 92 is fantastic it's where ford tells you to wear your seat belt and then it gives all sorts of reasons people wouldn't wear their seatbelt and then ford's rebuttal my personal favorite is seat belts wrinkle my clothes is the excuse ford's rebuttal is possibly but a serious crash can do much more than wrinkle your clothes thank you ford for that highly serious and important message about seat belt safety i'm glad i know that with that said there were some nice luxury touches in here for instance i love the power rear vent windows you have little switches here on the overhead center console you press the switch and then it opens up the rear windows for ventilation for more air for the rear passengers which is pretty nice and a lot better than the old-school vent windows where you had to manually open yourselves which are a lot more difficult to deal with this excursion also had pretty good technology for its time you can see in the center console you have a cd changer in here which is nice to see and of course i already showed you the screens and the massive overhead center console i think those screens were dealer installed options although they may have been factory but either way they were stuck in there when this vehicle was new so that your rear passengers could be entertained and it gave more of a luxury feel to the limited model especially while you were towing around your kids you could keep them quiet and one more nice touch you have two cup holders in the front center which is fine but you also have two more cup holders inside this little panel you pull it out and now you have four cup holders up front which is nice although these cup holders in the panel are for soft cups only it specifically tells you that do not put hard cups in these cup holders and if you have a cup that's sort of on the line between hard and soft err on the side of caution put it in the normal cup holders but the truth is the people buying this didn't really need a luxury suv a lot of people buying excursions had previously owned super duty pickups that they towed with and so this just gave them an opportunity to tow and bring the family and have a cargo area and so even just a few more creature comforts than a super duty actually went a pretty long way primarily because most people buying this were really doing so for the capabilities anything else was a bonus and the excursion's utilitarian feel certainly extended to its styling this was not a nice looking suv now i would never call it ugly i certainly don't think that but it wasn't like beautiful there are no swoopy lines nothing designed to make this like an attractive or particularly endearing suv instead you had the front end from the ford super duty trucks and then you had a rear end that was basically an suv and that was pretty much how they made this it's not the best looking again utilitarian simple easy which would kind of fit with the purpose of the excursion to be totally honest and so those are the quirks and features of the ford excursion now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the excursion i have wanted to do a video on an excursion for a very long time but it's hard to find a nice one and so i'm glad that this worked out being able to do this one that's also on cars and beds now this being a gas excursion there's going to be some people who comment hey you should have done the 7.3 and that's probably true the 7.3 is definitely the one that more people want so this is the second best powertrainer plus it's a v10 in you know the family suv like i said before like i think that aspect of it is kind of crazy so a lot of people are going to watch this they're going to say well the excursion is an excessive vehicle just overly excessive and stupid and i get that but when i was growing up i knew two people uh who had them and one person was a family of either six or seven they had like four or five kids and the other so they had a lot of stuff and the cargo area behind all the seats is helpful and the other was it was a family of five so two parents and three kids but they had horses and they towed and they both if i recall they had bought the excursions new and then they just owned them forever like they had 200 plus thousand miles they were falling apart but they were like we can't find anything else that really gives us what this gives us and that is the reason why this has been so desirable on the used market and so as a result when i make fun of some of the interior materials in here like the different colored plastics not looking good and all the stupid words like clip telling you it's a clip okay get it like that stuff is stupid but it doesn't really matter to the people who actually want these and kind of need them for their capabilities now chevy has done a 2500 series suburban they've done it for years but the excursion was simply more capable it had way more interior room it had more capacity than a 2500 suburban and you can't even get a heavy-duty suburban anymore they only sell them to fleets now so driving this thing around first thing i noticed it's actually not as big as i was expecting um probably because i've just driven so many weird big vehicles for this channel but it doesn't feel as big as i had thought it would feel given you know all the hate that it got back then now it's certainly big the body rolls you go to turn the wheel not much happens like very over assisted steering you know it's not a sports car by any stretch but it doesn't feel that massive to me um it's a big vehicle but you know it's drivable in a city i feel like modern pickup trucks are way too way way bigger and way more you know unusable to an extent this truck did pretty much give you everything you wanted like i said not a sports car driving experience about a floor here it makes a lot of noise but it doesn't really go anywhere it's not fast no one would ever accuse this of being fast um and same deal with the steering and handling i mean it's just disastrously you know i mean it's it's how it was designed this truck is relatively low miles for an excursion it's not just war that's just the way it is but the truth is these were not bought by people who had any preconceived notion that it was going to be anything other than what they needed which was like a hauler they needed a car that could haul and haul and haul and i there used to be a carfax app where you could look up vins and get a carfax report like mobile um unlimited and my friends and i would do this and we just would always carfax every excursion we would see because they often had 300 plus thousand four hundred plus thousand miles people just bought them to drive and then they drove them hauled with them towed with them thousands of miles all over the country and that's what these are for they're absolute workhorses and so yeah they're not that nice inside they don't have a lot of great amenities they don't drive like fun or exciting in any way but that wasn't the point the point is you could just use it like basically no other vehicle before or since and that is why they're still so desirable so sitting in this thing today yeah it's not that nice it looks like an old super duty like this is crappy but the capabilities that it offered are even still today like to some extent unmatched um especially when it comes to interior volume and so that's the ford excursion these are massive and inefficient especially by today's standards but even back then but they have a unique ability to tow whatever you want and haul whoever you want and all their stuff and so it's no surprise that it's hard to find a good excursion on the used market but you can find this one on cars and bins anyway now it's time to give the excursion a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the excursion isn't exactly beautiful it's not ugly but it's utilitarian not attractive and it gets a 4 out of 10. acceleration does 0 to 60 slowly and it gets a 1 out of 10. handling is ponderous and slow not dangerous but as far from engaging and exciting as you can be and it gets a two out of ten fun factor is also very low there's really nothing fun about this that wasn't the point and it gets a one out of ten finally cool factor these are kind of cool this massive super duty suv experiment ford tried briefly they're getting rarer and more sought after and it gets a 4 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 12 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features the excursion is pretty basic by modern standards and it gets a 3 out of 10. comfort is average and it gets a 5 out of 10. quality is decent the interior materials aren't special but reliability is strong especially with this powertrain and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is huge and it gets a 9 out of 10 stopping short of a perfect score only due to the horrible fuel economy finally value and these are bargains 10 to 15 grand for a huge highly capable very reliable family hauler and they don't really lose value even if you put miles on them it's big money for an old afford but not if you need the capabilities and it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total daily score of 30 out of 50. added up in the doug score is 42 out of 100 which puts the excursion here against sort of relevant cars it beats out the lincoln navigator from its era the excursion is more practical and a bit cooler that the navigator is more comfortable the excursion is definitely a relic from a different era but it's still a desirable vehicle for people who want one car that can do it all [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,438,966

Keywords: ford excursion, ford excursion review, excursion review, excursion, ford suv, ford super duty, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: qz0PHsHrPn0

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021