Remember the Aughts? It was a decade when, for a few years between 9/11 and the economic shock of soaring oil prices and the subprime mortgage crisis, gas-guzzling behemoth SUVs like the Ford Excursion and the Hummer H3 became the de riguer, defiant status symbol of patrolling suburban cul-de-sacs of America. Well, it turns out there's now a small but dedicated market of enthusiasts who are eagerly paying tens of thousands of dollars to build "new" Excursions.
The Detroit News wrote about Custom Autos, a Guthrie, Oklahoma, shop that is building around 40 Excursions a year by fitting a back end of the old monster ute to an F-250 Super Duty chassis. It takes them about two months to build a "new" Excursion for at least $40,000, not including the donor chassis. People spend as much as $100,000 to re-create the vehicle.
"What I hear all the time is people wish Ford would build the Excursion again," owner Tim Huskey tells the News.
Ford first introduced the Excursion for 2000 and quietly discontinued the extended-length SUV after the 2005 model year, when it sold just 16,283 units. The eight- or nine-seater, depending on how you configured it, was available with either a standard 5.4-liter V8 or a 6.8-liter V10, with 7.3-liter and 6.0-liter turbodiesel V8s also offered at various times. Fuel economy was abysmal, dipping below 10 mpg on some gas-powered models. The Sierra Club called it a "suburban supertanker" and awarded Ford the "Exxon Valdez Award."
At 226.7 inches and a curb weight of up to 7,668 pounds, it was also the longest and heaviest SUV ever made. Which explains its appeal to some people.
"We're never getting rid of this," said Steve Simon, a Massachusetts resident who paid Custom Autos to rebuild his 2005 model. "We drove across the country in it a couple of times. You don't have to think about, 'Oh, we can't take this, or we can't take that.' Nobody's got a car big enough to comfortably fit six people in it anymore."
Huskey even does versions with six doors, as you can see in the video above.
Read the whole story at The Detroit News.
The Detroit News wrote about Custom Autos, a Guthrie, Oklahoma, shop that is building around 40 Excursions a year by fitting a back end of the old monster ute to an F-250 Super Duty chassis. It takes them about two months to build a "new" Excursion for at least $40,000, not including the donor chassis. People spend as much as $100,000 to re-create the vehicle.
"What I hear all the time is people wish Ford would build the Excursion again," owner Tim Huskey tells the News.
Ford first introduced the Excursion for 2000 and quietly discontinued the extended-length SUV after the 2005 model year, when it sold just 16,283 units. The eight- or nine-seater, depending on how you configured it, was available with either a standard 5.4-liter V8 or a 6.8-liter V10, with 7.3-liter and 6.0-liter turbodiesel V8s also offered at various times. Fuel economy was abysmal, dipping below 10 mpg on some gas-powered models. The Sierra Club called it a "suburban supertanker" and awarded Ford the "Exxon Valdez Award."
At 226.7 inches and a curb weight of up to 7,668 pounds, it was also the longest and heaviest SUV ever made. Which explains its appeal to some people.
"We're never getting rid of this," said Steve Simon, a Massachusetts resident who paid Custom Autos to rebuild his 2005 model. "We drove across the country in it a couple of times. You don't have to think about, 'Oh, we can't take this, or we can't take that.' Nobody's got a car big enough to comfortably fit six people in it anymore."
Huskey even does versions with six doors, as you can see in the video above.
Read the whole story at The Detroit News.
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