Ford Explorer

Which Ford Explorer years should you avoid?

Going by 34,642 owner complaints filed with NHTSA, the Ford Explorer years to avoid are 1998, 1996, 2002, 2016 and 1994.

• 19981,959 complaints, 2.1× a typical Explorer year, most often about the tires; and 2.2× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (102 fires, 181 crashes, 16 deaths).
• 19963.7× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (37 fires, 197 crashes, 51 deaths).
• 20023,295 complaints, 3.5× a typical Explorer year, most often about the transmission.
• 20162,465 complaints, 2.6× a typical Explorer year, most often about the body and frame.
• 19942.4× the usual share of fires, crashes and deaths for a car of its age (82 fires, 109 crashes, 20 deaths).

4 more years cleared the same bar; they are marked in the table below.

Better bets: among years old enough for a low count to mean something, the 2022, 2019 and 2018 drew the fewest complaints without an unusual share of serious ones.

Too new to judge: 2025, 2026 and 2027. Complaints take a few years to arrive, so a new model year looks better than it is.

How this is worked out: each year is compared with a typical year of the same model, which takes most of the difference in sales out of it, and its share of serious failures is compared with every other car of the same model year, because older cars were complained about differently. A year needs 25 complaints to be judged at all. Complaints are unverified owner reports. Full method →