Word: bronco
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...versa. But a five-month investigation by TIME of Ford documents, which the company prepared for investigators and government lawyers, shows Ford's engineers were wrestling with the stability and handling of the Explorer even before it hit the market in 1990-as a sibling for the notorious bucking Bronco II, which cost the company approximately $2.4 billion in damage settlements. Previously undisclosed memos and e-mails show the extent to which the engineers were juggling decisions about the Explorer's suspension systems, tire pressure, weight and steering characteristics, plus its height and width, all of which could factor into...
...Explorer's platform dates back to the late 1970s, when Ford created a new line of light trucks-code-named Yuma-that came to include the Ranger pickup and the now infamous Bronco II. Both vehicles used a unique "Twin I-Beam" suspension that raised their center of gravity by placing crisscrossing beams atop one another between the front tires...
...company marketed I-Beam directly to consumers, since it had been used on the original and highly popular Bronco. But the Bronco II became a nightmare for Ford, which by the late 1980s faced more than 800 lawsuits that stemmed from accidents involving rollovers. That didn't deter Ford from using the same suspension on the new Explorer, which allowed the automaker to build the SUV on the same assembly lines as the Ranger pickup...
...This choice soon produced unsettling results. While undergoing handling maneuvers in 1989, an Explorer prototype showed a greater tendency to lift its wheels while turning-a possible prelude to rollovers-than even the Bronco II. The test report observed that the Explorer had to be "at least equivalent to the Bronco II in these maneuvers to be considered acceptable for production...
...That was a rock-bottom standard, since the image of the Bronco II continued to worsen. In June 1989 a Consumer Reports article titled "How Safe Is the Bronco II?" rated its handling as poor in a test that simulated rapid lane changes. The Consumers Union publication advised "prudent buyers" to steer clear of it. According to an original analysis prepared for TIME by University of Michigan statistician Hans Joksch, an expert in automotive statistics, the Explorer has had approximately the same rate of fatal rollovers as the Bronco...