2007 Ford Expedition Eddie Bauer 4x4

2007 Ford Expedition Eddie Bauer 4x4

The good: An intuitive and feature-packed touch screen navigation system and a multifunction rear-seat entertainment module make the 2007 Ford Expedition a surprisingly wired ride.

The bad: For a car with such huge exterior dimensions, rear-seat space is limited. Providing you don't need to tow a boat home, there are far more efficient ways of getting seven people to the mall and back.

The bottom line: The 2007 Ford Expedition is a brawny behemoth with some advanced digital gadgetry. Its advanced navigation system impressed us, but its bulky form is not suited to modern urban driving.

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The Ford Expedition got an update for its 2007 model year. With the demise of the Excursion line, the 2007 Expedition is the biggest passenger car in Ford's lineup these days, and the behemoth SUV sports many of the design cues that are currently in vogue among Ford's designers, including a three-bar chrome grille, chiseled front fenders, and a bug-eyed headlight arrangement. Inside, the Expedition has been given even more of an overhaul. For those willing to tick the boxes on the options sheet, there is a world of digital diversion available, including a voice-activated navigation system, an MP3-compatible stereo, and a rear-seat entertainment system.

For our tech test of the 2007 Ford Expedition, we decided to take the car at its word--on an expedition--using some of its advanced cabin tech features. While the Expedition's voice-recognition system doesn't understand spoken addresses (the Honda / Acura system is the only one that we've seen that can), it will understand spoken directions to a specific point of interest category. For our adventure, we took our Expedition tester to Monterey for lunch, or, more accurately, we let it take us to Monterey for lunch.

Our plan was to program the Expedition's touch screen navigation system to lead us to Monterey some 120 miles away and, once there, to ask the voice-recognition system to recommend a restaurant. Our first impression of the navigation system when we climbed (yes, climbed) into the cabin was not altogether positive. Despite the car's enormous size, the in-dash LCD screen is small, and its fonts and menus have a very basic appearance. However, when we got to programming the unit we found it extremely responsive and user-friendly. The main reason for this accessibility is the system's touch screen interface. Rather than having to twist knobs or repeatedly press buttons, we were able to punch in our address directly on the screen. Adding to the speed of programming destinations is the system's ability to process each selection almost instantly, ensuring that we didn't have to endure the frustration of waiting around for the processor between menu screens (a welcome change from the navigation system in the 2007 Mercedes-Benz E320 BlueTec that we reviewed last week).

Having set our destination as downtown Monterey, we put ourselves in the hands of the navigation system and set out to follow its directions exactly. Like other leading navigation systems, the Expedition's features text-to-voice technology enabling it to call out specific road names during voice guidance. Making our way through the city to the highway, we found the directions to be timely and accurate, albeit a little too ****ty (there appears to be no way to lessen the frequency of the voice prompts). Once on the freeway, the navigation system continued to impress us. At intersections, the display changes to a split-screen format, showing a large turn arrow on the right-hand side and a larger map on the left. We managed to cover the 120 miles to Monterey--including a stretch over the winding, mountainous Highway 17--without once losing the GPS signal, which is more than can be said for the navigation system in the 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid .

Once in the city's center, it was time for voice-recognition system to take on the next stage of the challenge. Pressing the Voice button on the right-hand side of the steering wheel brings up a spoken menu of available voice commands....

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For some reason, the voice that speaks each menu option differs from the turn-by-turn voice guidance from the navigation system: The latter has a human intonation, but the voice-recognition menus are spoken in a voice that sounds like a drunken robot slurring its words. The second gripe we had with the voice-recognition system was its way of asking for confirmation at each stage of a multistep command. For example, when trying to call up restaurants in the vicinity, the procedure went like this:

(Press button)

System: \"Please say a command.\"

Us: \"Navigation\"

System: \"Navigation, is that correct?\"

Us: \"Yes\"

System \"Navigation, main menu; options are Destination or More Options.\"

Us: \"Destination\"

System: \"Destination, is that correct?\"

Us: \"Yes\"

System: \"Please select a category.\"

Us: \"Restaurant\"

System: \"Navigation, destination, all restaurants; is that correct?\"

Us: \"Yes\"

System: \"American, Italian, Mexican, fast food...\"

Us: \"Mexican\"

System: \"Navigation, destination, Mexican restaurants; is that correct?\"

Us: \"Yes\"

System: \"Please make your selection from the screen.\"

There appears to be no way to shortcut this constant stream of confirmation requests after each selection, making the whole process very cumbersome. After enduring this long and uninspiring conversation, we were then provided with a list of options of Mexican restaurants on the touch screen, listed by proximity. With an impulsive press of the top button, we chose the closest option--Taco Del Mar--which turned out to be a felicitous choice, and we set about dispatching a very tasty fish burrito (no, we'd never heard of it either) before setting out home....

In the cabin

Looking over the top of a BMW X5 in front of us on the highway, we realized just how huge the 2007 Ford Expedition really is. As one would expect in a car with a driver's seat set as high as that of a bus, forward visibility is very good. Rear visibility is less so: To our dismay, the 2007 Expedition does not come with a rearview camera as part of its navigation system upgrade. Our car included the optional Convenience Package, which includes a reverse-sensing system in its $695 price tag. Also aiding rear visibility is the Expedition's all-glass liftgate, which can be opened separately from the rear hatch. Our tester came equipped with a power liftgate ($495), the button for which is located on the inside of the cargo area (rather than on the bottom of the hatch), which necessitates a quick escape by those who wish to avoid being sandwiched in the closing door. The rear-end gadgetry continues with a power-hideaway third row of seats. With a push of a button, the third-row seats tumble forward automatically into the foot well. The result is an expansion of the cargo area floor by about 36 cubic feet.

In addition to its touch screen programmability, the Expedition's navigation system boasts a number of commendable features, including one-touch map scrolling; color-coded road info (pink for unusable roads, purple for roads under construction, and so on); detailed building footprints for the 20 largest cities in the U.S.; and an address database that defaults to the current state.

Aside from its navigational duties, the Expedition's small, in-dash touch screen can be used to control various kinds of in-car media. Our 2007 Expedition, with the Eddie Bauer trim, came standard with an Audiophile stereo system featuring an in-dash six-CD changer with MP3 capability and a very prominent auxiliary-input jack for MP3 players. The output of the 340-watt (peak) stereo comes courtesy of seven speakers around the cabin, including a standalone subwoofer. Despite having some advanced sound-processing options (digital signal processing and a Compression function that boosts quiet sounds while lowering the volume of louder music), the Audiophile system sounded very bass-heavy and lacked the clarity of separation needed for crisp reproduction of classical music.

Playback of digital audio on the Expedition's stereo is very straightforward. With MP3 discs playing, the system shows ID3-tag information for the current folder and file, as well as (with a press of the Text button) the artist and the track title. A particularly useful feature enables drivers to choose between Folder mode and Track mode when playing MP3s, with the latter playing a disc straight through without regard for folder divisions. Our test car was equipped with the optional rear-seat entertainment system, which we found to be surprisingly packed with media functions. Ford makes no effort to integrate the components of its rear-seat system into the dashboard of the Expedition, choosing instead to stick a huge console onto the car's roof.

Source: [url=http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/CNet/story?id=2876770]ABC News[/url]