To save manutacturing cost, since it's not required by law in the US to have amber rear turn signals Ford decided to save some money.
>So why doesn't the US Explorer have the same tri-color taillight assemblies,
>with separate amber turn signals, just like the US Windstar and Escape? The
>'95 through '01s did. The taillights on the Australian Explorer look
>*great*---definitely better than the plain stop/tail/turn red lamp on the US >Explorer.
I understand that---but the tooling was already in place for other countries, and since most of Ford's competitors in the US also use something just a little more interesting and stylish, what was the point of designing separate assemblies for the US? Tri-color was never a problem for Ford from '99 to '01, nor for the Windstar, Escape, Focus, ...
And sometimes, a little style is worth a few pennies. The Mountaineer has side marker lamps, the Aviator has extra lamps on the hatch...
Bottom line? The Australian Explorer really looks MUCH better with the other taillamps.
Why would they make the Australian model more attractive than the one in their biggest Explorer market?
And, finally, the picture I was looking for:
The tri-color taillamps should have been on US Explorers since day one of the 2002 model, IMHO.
I'll second that ... along with the mud flaps. Looks MUCH better!!
I can just hear the accounting types at the production meeting ... "Let's see, we're going to build 100,000 Explorers for the USA market in 2002, if we loose the tricolor taillights, we save $1.00 each. That's a savings of $100,000!!!"
Of course, they never thought that I as a consumer plunking down my $35,000
I also wonder what it would take to get the taillights & fix the wiring .... can't be much.
Ken
It'd cost at least $8 more.. std markup is 8x cost of goods..
Nice markup ... I'd still pay.
Wish I could get that in my business!!
Ken
I like my '01 Sport - I do NOT like the single color tail lamps after having had the tri-color lamps on my '96.
Heck, eve if the wiring didn't stand a chance of retrofitting the tri-color lamp to my '01 - I'd still bolt 'em on ;)
Yup.
The wiring could probably be easily modified. One wire on each side, to connect to the bulb in the amber lens, would go to the wire running to each front turn signal. The red-lens high filament would connect to the CHMSL instead of its current connection. Everything else would stay the same. Without the factory harness, though, you'd need to find sockets, which, actually, isn't too tough to do.
I'm going to go to one of the local Ford dealers (where I know the Parts Manager) and find out if I can buy the tri-color assemblies (and the harness) that Ford uses for 2002-03 exported Explorers. If I can get this done, I'll post the results.
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