Climate Change? Nahhh ...

Mine is classified as a compact. Has plenty of punch. Much, much better power-to-weight ratio ... IMO, the most overlooked stat when considering vehicles.

I don't want that in a land barge, but in a smaller vehicle.

 

I have parent with a larger SUV. I can barely see over the hood standing on the ground looking across it from one side, and I'm the only one who can access parts of it to clean it up without hanging off a large stepladder. And compared to said parent, I'm almost a basketball player.

I don't get it, and suspect I never will.

 

FoMoCo was convinced it had cured the hot little problem that doomed the Pinto. Oops.

 

It's a carryover from the ideas derived from smaller vehicles ... we'll make them more fuel efficient by cutting the displacement – taking out a cylinder or two in the process in some cases – and using forced induction in a crap attempt to make up the difference.

Not sure it works. Worse, it puts a lot more strain on the engine and shortens its long-term life. But keep on with silly ideas ...

 

buddy of mine had a big SUV, Suburban maybe don’t remember, (he actually needed it - soccer family with multiple kids). When you were at interstate cruising speed, it automatically cut off 4 cylinders and got insanely good gas mileage for its size.

that stuff is nice, but just like my wife’s Escape that turns the engine off when you are stopped with the brake on, I figure the more techno crap is just more that could possible break and cost a lot to fix.

 

Parents had a Honda Odyssey with an engine that could go into "ECO" mode to save fuel when it was not accelerating or going uphill. That was an excellent vehicle ... traded in only because in part it turned into a bad reminder and mostly because my mother got a bunch for trading it in with low miles toward her next machine.

IMO, big difference between a vehicle that has the ability to get going that can shut off a bank of cylinders and what you described upthread. What you described is permanently trying to compensate for being otherwise underpowered. That's a problem and many powerplants will pay the piper long term trying to compensate for that issue, the odds of which will almost certainly increase if you use a vehicle to haul stuff as you have described. A vehicle shutting off half its cylinders is not the same sort of issue.

 

car brain

 

The Defector misanthropic tone works quite well at The Atlantic.

 

As my aunt says when she sees a guy driving a huge jacked up truck: Sorry about your penis!

 

I have a 2021 Ranger with the 2.3L 4-cylinder engine. I bought it new and recently turned 24,000 miles on it. I tow 3,000 pounds with it fairly regularly.

The engine is the same as the one in the Mustang with a different timing-fueling map. It still has enough punch to pass an 18-wheeler on a two-lane highway without anxiety. The 10-speed transmission does a great job of keeping the rpms in the sweet part of the power band. The engine turns just over 2k rpm at 80 mph. It runs fine on regular fuel, and now that the weather has warmed up I'm getting 22+ mpg according to the onboard mile-o-meter (that's probably optimistic, I've never checked).

I see a lot of 15- or 20-year-old F-150s around here, and I think today's Ranger is of comparable size, maybe slightly narrower than the old Effie. The Maverick wasn't available when I made my purchase; I don't think I'd go that route anyway because the bed is only 4 1/2 feet long. If the Maverick had a supercab as well as the crew cab, I might be more interested.

Oh, and I think I read somewhere that the '24 Ranger was going to offer the 2.7L V6 as an option. The 2.7 is a fine performer, but I don't think it's needed.

 

The original Maverick was such a POS vehicle I'm surprised Ford resurrected the model name.

 

Hell to the naw.