2002 Ford Explorer Sport Trac Pickup Reviews & Ratings

Sport Trac's cabin is durable. The flooring is made of a textured composite rubber easily swept with a Wisk broom or cleaned with water. Door panels are resilient plastic. Cloth is only found on the seats and headliner. The rest is ready for mud. The rubber flooring under the removable Berber carpet floor mats offers enhanced sound insulation.

Optional leather seating ($655) includes leather low-back seats with adjustable head restraints, six-way power driver's seat, and manual lumbar adjustment for the front seats.

The front seats are nicely contoured and quite comfortable. We weren't crazy about the looks of the dark brown gabardine seats at first, but they kind of grew on us. We prefer the lighter shade. The seat material appears to be easy to clean.

The rear seats are roomy. Rear legroom is ample at 37.8 inches, a full seven inches more than the Nissan Frontier. The back seat also contains three child seat tether anchors, standard. The rear seats split and fold down without having to remove the headrests, which quickly provides cargo space inside the cabin.

Big fixed cup holders in front, forward of the armrest, add convenience, along with a little slot good for coins and tickets. Forward of that is another tray with two more slots, one of them fairly big.

The removable nylon pack under the center armrest was curious. It enables you to carry your console contents with you. It even has a shoulder strap. But it gives up function that would exist if it were fixed. It was awkward when in place, and as a result we never used the compartment because we didn't want to deal with first raising the armrest, then lifting a limp material top secured by Velcro.

A power rear window slides up and down, either slightly for flow-through ventilation or all the way down, which the kids in the back seat will love. Back-seat passengers can reach through to grab things out of the bed, such as drinks from a cooler.

A digital compass with outside temperature gauge over the rearview mirror is a highly useful and appreciated tool that more carmakers should fit in their vehicles, especially any vehicle that may head into the backcountry. We noticed it was a long reach to the emergency brake release.

Ford is trying hard with big-ticket engineering details, an area where the company excels. A lot of effort went into reducing the noise level in the cabin, successfully.

Sport Tracs come with Ford's 205-horsepower 4.0-liter V6. It's a sophisticated engine, with overhead-cams, and an aluminum head and pistons. It likes to rev, and it's smooth, responsive and great fun at speed. The 237 foot-pounds of torque come way up there at 4000 rpm, and 203 horsepower is produced at 5250 rpm, with redline at 6250. But that fun you're having at speed will have to come in the lower gears; at 75 mph the engine cruises at a mere 2650 rpm. That's with the standard 3.73 final drive rear axle ratio. The optional 4.10 rear-axle ratio with a limited-slip differential ($355) would allow the engine to better do its thing, although at the expense of gas mileage. The higher-numerical 4.10 rear end also improves performance for towing.

With five speeds in the transmission, we were surprised by how far the tach needle jumped when the transmission kicked down, as more gears mean closer ratios. Once, we were hauling uphill on the freeway at 70, working around a semi-rig, and when the tranny kicked down, evidently from fourth to third, the rpm lunged to more than 5000, then back to 3500 when it upshifted again. But overall, the transmission matched the engine for smoothness and sophistication. You do get quality Ford engineering, here.

The four-wheel-drive system can be shifted on the fly between two- and four-wheel drive. A low-range mode is ready for heavy snow, deep mud or soft sand.

To make the Sport Trac, Ford lengthened the Explorer's frame more than 14 inches to 206 inches on a 126-inch wheelbase. An Explorer's suspension and drive train isn't Ford Tough like the big Super Duty pickups, but Ford reinforced the frame for greater rigidity and tuned the suspension to improve its off-road performance. Payload is up to 1,500 pounds with a 5,040-pound towing capacity.

The Sport Trac is quite tall, so it doesn't handle like a car. There is some weave and pitch, sway and jounce. It's not heavy, but the rougher the road and the higher the speed, the stronger it gets. The bushings, spring rates, shock valving and stabilizer bars have been modified, according to Ford, for improved ride, handling, and noise/vibration/harshness over the Explorer. The power rack-and-pinion steering did not provide as much assist as we would have liked for parallel parking in tight places.

The Sport Trac comes with bigger brake rotors than the previous-generation Explorer, using ventilated discs in front and drums in the rear. The brakes slowed and stopped the Sport Trac okay.

Ford Explorer Sport Trac comes in two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive models. Three equipment packages are available: Value, Choice, and Premium.

The 2WD Value ($22,040) and 4WD Value ($24,810) versions come with a long list of standard equipment. Value packages actually give the buyer a credit over the base models by deleting the five-speed automatic transmission, leather-wrapped steering wheel, remote keyless entry, cruise control, and a tilt steering column.

Make Choice your choice and you get cruise control, power door locks, a more powerful version of the 4.0-liter V6 engine, remote keyless entry, a tilting steering column and an automatic transmission. Choice 2WD ($23,880) and Choice 4WD ($26,650) versions are considered the base models.

Pick the Premium package ($1560) and you get a 4.10 axle, floor and overhead consoles, fog lights, captains chairs with six-way power for the driver's seat, step bars to ease entry and exit from the cabin and upgraded tires.

For 2002, all Explorer Sport Tracs get 16-inch alloy wheels (instead of the old 15-inch versions). There's also a new 23-gallon fuel tank that replaces the 20.5-capacity tank in the 2001 model.