YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!! One more evil monster SUV bites the dust!! A trend I hope continues.

Excursion near end of road

Reports say Ford will discontinue 19-foot-long SUV after the 2004 model year.
July 31, 2002: 8:03 AM EDT



NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Ford Motor Co. is set to discontinue the Ford Excursion, its largest sport/utility vehicle, after the 2004 model year, according to broadcast and published reports Wednesday.

WDIV-TV in Detroit and the New York Times, both citing unnamed sources, said the No. 2 automaker will discontinue the model, whose sales have been falling and which never lived up to projected demand.


Reports say Ford is set to discontinue its largest SUV, the Excursion, after the 2004 model year.
Both the station and the paper quoted Ford representatives as saying they would not comment on plans for the vehicle beyond saying it is included in the 2003 model lineup, due in showrooms later this year.

The Excursion, introduced in 1999, holds eight passengers and is almost two feet longer than Ford's next largest SUV, the Ford Expedition. and has a manufacturer's suggested list price of $36,105 to $48,150. At nearly 19 feet long, nearly 7 feet tall in its four-wheel drive version, and getting only 10 miles to a gallon, it has been criticized almost from the start as an extreme example of the gas-guzzling SUV that towers over other vehicles on the road. In addition, SUV buyers have become more interested in compact models, such as the Ford Escape, which had nearly five times as many sales in 2001.

Ford has sold 15,107 Excursions through the first six months of the year, down 16 percent from the year-earlier period. Last year's sales of 34,710 were down almost a third from 2000, its first full year in production.


This is what gets me "...is so large that Ford installed a blocker beam to prevent it from rolling over smaller cars in crashes" Funny thing is most of the f'in things are single person vehicles.