Forgive me for excluding the Cherokee's I don't have alot of experience with them and failed to realize that they are indeed unibodys. And quite impressive one's at that. Recently I did have the chance to take a modified Cherokee and drive it through some pretty rough trails in the mountains of New Mexico and it did very very well. But I beleive you are right when you say they are the exception not the rule. 9/10 Unibody vehicles produced today are no more than car's raised up slightly to give a more SUV like apperence.

 

I would like to reiterate what an earlier poster stated:

We are all sheep being led around if we continue to allow the vehicles we choose to drive to be made with lesser motors (you can make a small motor do what a big motor does, but it won't last anywhere near as long as the big motor will: look at the 6.0L vs. the 7.3L, and I don't believe the 4.2L V6's go the big mileage anywhere near the number of times the 4.6L ad 5.4L V8's do), while anyone who makes big money can still pay a tax to drive 500 HP sports cars. (Where does that tax money go to - directly toward planting trees to try to make up for their emissions outputs and the extra logistics put into supplying them with more fuel? - no, that tax money just goes *poof*, and it really isn't a big tax, proportionally, to begin with - it's not like the tax is enough to tell rich people "No, you shouldn't be driving this car becase we, as a country, have agreed we want everyone to output lower emissions and use less fuel.")

My stance is either the majority believes that all personally-owned vehicles should be held to the standard, or they don't. It isn't for the rich and powerful to decide what WE have to buy and drive while they can still buy vehicles that in no way adhere to the same standards.

Don't get me wrong - I do like the systems in place as of today. What we have in the modular V-8's and emissions control on them seem like an OK balance since we have a good chance of getting so much value for our money in long mileage out of them (with low overall maintenance costs). Making us buy smaller motors to try to keep up with what we need from the larger motors we have now seems like we're getting sold short.

10 years from now Ford's reputation will be on the line, again, when the new V-6 motors are either puttering out, or hitting over 300,000 miles with little trouble. I'm convinced that a company's reputation really does come from what it produced five and ten years before any given date. If they made crap 5 and 10 years prior to a given date, only fools who believe advertising campaigns will buy products made in the decade that follows.

 

OH NOEZ FEAR TECHNOLOGY!!!!!! The reason we can get by with a smaller engine (not motor, motor's are electric) is because of technology. The reason big displacement V8s were made was because that was the only way to get the HP and Torque that people need/want. Now that we have direct injection, variable cam, higher quality turbos, etc, we don't necessarily need a bigger engine. Sure some of these things will need fine tuning but your truck isn't going to fall apart because it has a 5.0L V8 compared to a 5.4L V8 or because it has a 3.7L V6 instead of a 4.6L V8. The Duratec engines (3.5,3.7) have been in cars for a few years now and I haven't heard of any issues with the engines themselves. The Ecoboost has been in the Taurus for 2 years now with very little problems. You might say "Well that's a car, not a truck". Yes, that is a car, but it's a 4500#+ car that is all time AWD. Ford wouldn't be putting this engine into a truck if they did not know if it was going to last.

 

Around 1970, I hated the idea of any emissions regs (I was a musclecar guy and hotrodder) but in retrospect, emissions rules forced the development of fuel injection, electronics, and other technologies where a new Mustang will go faster than my 1970 Hemi Cuda in stock form, start in the winter (unlike the hemi) and get 2-3 times the gas mileage.

My son and his future children will have cleaner air to breathe as well. And more oil for their future use.

I am also a luddite who would have thought that a V8 as small as 4.6 liters was no way enough for a big vehicle like my E150--but it's clear that the 4.6 will go a LONG way in a truck or van, as well as cop cars, taxis, etc.

I agree with you on the 5-10 year reliability history thing. This is where Honda and Toyota got their huge market share--and they got it with SMALLER engines than American cars were using at the time. Around 1970, I never would have believed that a 2 liter 4 cylinder engine could last 100k miles in any car. There are now Hondas, Toyotas, Volvos, etc. that have gone half a million miles with 2 liter and smaller 4 cylinder engines. And they have saved a lot of fuel over those miles.

Sometimes forcing technology can be painful, but in the end, it is often beneficial. We shall see how today's smaller engines hold up,
George

ps--edit--you indicate that we are being led around like sheep in the country's quest to use less oil, but it would seem to me that thinking patriots (which I consider myself to be) would OPPOSE sending billions of dollars to the Mideast each year to buy oil and would do everything they could to increase gas mileage. The "freedom" to drive gas hogs does not seem like real freedom if we slowly drain America's cash reserves to enrich the Middle East. I am willing to drive a vehicle with less power to avoid selling my great grandchildren's country to Saudi Arabia et al.

 

You know what that is actually very profound way to look at it all. As a vet, I like it! Plus Anything that helps people push tech is a good thing. The reason I say this is too many folks don't want change and only look as far as they have to. However when you try to take in all things that help in the long run then guess what, we have better stronger and more efficiant cars and trucks for longer. I am just glad that Ford is willing to push the envolope before they are forced to by the government. That way they have time to adjust not react like GM or Ram.

 

And I agree - it's nice to want to save where we can. I plan on buying a much smaller secondary vehicle, of some type that is interesting to me (and have been thinking about this since I saw it: Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com for commuting, so don't think I don't want to save - it's just that those kinds of options aren't out there yet), to save fuel. But it's another to be forced to have to buy from limited options in our work trucks when other segments of society that need the HP and low-end torque from a larger displacement less continue to be imported.

Those who buy newer vehicles, instead of investing in them for the long-haul, tend to be less picky.

But you're all probably right. GM is the one I could point all ten of my fingers at, and some toes, for introducing technology that made numerous platforms less reliable. Ford, ahead of the game, introduced the Modular V8 which just blew the competition out of the water for awhile, and it's proven to be a reliable platform. I could see that the V-6, if built like a brick-****house (more bearings, tighter tolerances, well-studded heads, etc.) could still be a reliable long-block - but I haven't yet seen a V-6 that impressed me in as far as what it could do over a decade or running it hard. The straight-sixes held that title for a good while, and only a few V-8 platforms were ever built that well.

But I'm wary. Don't forget what Ford chose to offer in the 6.0L diesel in as far as technology that could put out the horsepower of the larger platform it replaced. Sure, it did it - but at the expense of halving its lifetime's usability.

 

I think the fact that Ford is manufacturing the engines instead of outsourcing the engines to a company like Navistar may help in terms of reliability because Ford won't be able to pass the buck like they did on the 6.0L. That being said, some of the 6.0L's issues were design related, but the majority were quality issues from Navistar. I don't think Ford will tolerate that with their new engine lineup. My preference would still be the 6.2L in my F150. It's not my daily driver. I want as much simplicity in my engines as possible so that pretty much puts me in the NA category.