REPORT: Ford to nix Explorer Sport Trac, Mercury Mountaineer

Anyone who actually wants a Ford Explorer Sport Trac had better go out and grab one now because they won't be around much longer. As production of the the current body-on-frame Explorer winds down in the coming months, the pickup bed version and the rebadged Mercury Mountaineer will breathe their last breath. Sometime in 2010 a new unibody Explorer based on the Flex/Taurus platform will debut and an open bed version will not be part of the lineup.

With total Explorer sales down to just 78,439 in 2008, including the Sport Trac, and those numbers down by half again this year, the number of Sport Tracs sold simply doesn't justify developing a new one. At its peak when Ford was moving some 400,000 Explorers annually, about 60,000 were Sport Tracs. This year the number is likely to be 10,000 or less.

[Source: Automotive News, sub. req'd]

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