- The Ford Explorer is the reigning Great American SUV, first sold in 1991.
- The 2018 Volkswagen Atlas is the German automaker's attempt to tackle the Explorer's market.
- We liked the Atlas enough to say that it's a winner against the longtime champ — for now.
The US auto market is all about SUVs right now. Luckily for Ford, its Explorer model has been around for almost three decades and has proven its worth. More recently, it's been attracting buyers who might otherwise choose an established luxury brand.
VW, by contrast, has for years been trying to sell the wrong cars to Americans. But for the 2018 model year, the German marque finally rolled out a true three-row SUV and gave it a normal name: Atlas.
We checked out both vehicles last year. Could the upstart dethrone the champ?
Photos by Hollis Johnson unless otherwise indicated.
This will be the battle of the Great White SUVs. First up, the Explorer!
Our tester was a $55,000 Platinum trim, in "White Platinum." The model year was 2017.
There are almost no SUVs that have a track record to match the Ford Explorer. Introduced in 1990, the Explorer has been in continuous production through five generations. The current iteration has been around since 2011. Even with the 2018 model year's update, the vehicle is getting a little long in the tooth.
The mid-size SUV market is critical to Ford, given that in combination with its best-selling F-Series pickup trucks, mid-size utes are major profit-drivers in the US. Ford must keep the Explorer competitive, even as both mass-market and luxury brands bring new large SUVs to consumers — and as Ford itself expands its portfolio of crossovers (the fifth-generation Explorer sits on a crossover frame, not a truck-based architecture).
The design of the Explorer has evolved over the years, becoming progressively sleeker. But this is still a full-size, three-row SUV that's intended to max out passenger space and cargo capacity.
What has always appealed when it comes to the Explorer is bang for the buck. You can haul around a large family and all their stuff in a vehicle that has tremendous capability, yet doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
In recent years, Ford has also followed a trend of packing the Explorer with premium appointments, making it a sort of smart-money alternative to fancier upscale SUVs.
Looks-wise, the waveform grille and backward-wrapping headlights reduce the overall massiveness of the front end, but the Explorer continues to have a powerful road presence when viewed from this angle.
The rear end is also nicely proportioned relative to the rest of the vehicle. Overall, the Explorer's design is about as harmonious as a quite large SUV can be.
It's important that the Explorer not come off as too sleek, however. This is an SUV that's meant to endure some punishment, either in the suburbs where we tested it or under more grueling conditions. Ford sells beefed-up versions to government and law-enforcement fleets.
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