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This Is the New Ford Explorer the US Won’t Get.

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It looks like the Ford Explorer is getting a new face and a revised interior. But not over here. Since this is the Chinese market model…

The big mouth up front is getting thinner, but also wider. Which is something I’ve seen happening with my neighbor Velma for the last few years. And there is now a big light bar up front as well. Just like so many other cars these days.

The rest of the car is still the same old Ford Explorer that came out in 2019. And that’s quite a long time. I guess keeping models for a long, long time is one of Ford’s specialties.

Inside, both versions are very different. While it seems door panels are very similar, the dashboard and center console are very different. Enough to make the US model feel much older. The US model had a mid-cycle refresh for the 2025 model year, and it wasn’t really an improvement. Featuriung a much larger grilel that doesn’t really fit the rest of the car at all..

The Explorer is quite expensive in China where it starts at over $45,000. It’s actually more expensive than here. In a country where the all-new Bronco New Energy EV/EREV starts at around $33,000, the Explorer seems to have zero chance in the market. That kind of pricing probably menas Ford is actually to kill the Explorer in China. But why spend monety on an update?

Conversation 4 comments

  1. What trim is the orange vehicle? Just goes to show that gussied up properly, perhaps not in orange, it could make the Chinese Explorer, and perhaps even ‘ol neighbor Velma, a looker, maybe even a contender, on any continent.

  2. It looks better than ours for sure, but still old. Ford could pump out 100 facelifts and still their models look dated. Just look at the 2016 explorer facelift of the generation that dates back to 2011. The front of the current 2026 US spec is barely different. Even the taillights look similar to that 2016 facelift… They are just more angular and less rounded. China also got our 2025 facelift a couple years prior with slight variation in the body.

  3. The orange one is equivalent to the Timberline. In the US our Timberline got replaced with the Tremor trim.

  4. Thank you, Baldy. I do like that trim. Although I must admit the orange piece on the front tire looks like a mini boot.

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