Rusty Eck Ford Omaha

There’s a common truck driver Catch-22 – if the truck is big enough, the driving experience is lousy, but if the truck handles well and gets great mileage, there’s no space to haul in the bed or the backseat. The 2010 Ford Explorer Sport Trac manages to eliminate the problem with a midsize pickup that’s half SUV, which makes the interior roomy and capable of carrying tons of cargo, but leaves the driving experience smooth and effortless. For those who want it all, the Ford Explorer Sport Trac is one of the only vehicles that solves this problem effortlessly, in a beautifully designed package.

The design is half SUV, half pickup, with four full doors instead of the dinky little half-doors that you see on most trucks. Those doors are usually a fair indication of the amount of legroom a passenger has to put up with inside – about a third of an average-sized seat, which is uncomfortable for anyone but small children. On the Ford Explorer Sport Trac, those seats are fully extended with plenty of legroom and extremely comfortable design, which means you can actually seat four adults comfortably, with a child or a smaller fifth adult in the middle rear seat.

You’d think that giving so much space to the passengers would rob the Ford Explorer Sport Trac of its cargo and carrying capacity, but you’d be wrong. The cargo bed is smaller than your average pickup’s, but it’s extremely wide and roomy, with a 4.5-foot utility box. If you need even more room for cargo and don’t happen to be carrying extra passengers that day, the Sport Trac actually allows you to extend your carrying capacity by putting down the 60/40 split rear seats to make another flat cargo area for anything that wouldn’t fit in the bed.

The argument over which is more important, cargo or passenger space, has proponents on either side who clearly haven’t hear that the Sport Trac is the solution to all their woes. Those two camps agree on one thing, though – power is still the most important factor in both trucks and SUVs. So what does the Ford Explorer Sport Trac have under the hood?

The answer to that question should put any remaining qualms to rest. The Sport Trac comes standard with a 4.0-liter V6 that puts out 210 horsepower and 254 lb-ft of torque, with a five-speed automatic transmission that shifts through the gears easily and effortlessly. The drive itself is as quiet and smooth as you could want, even with the huge capacity of the Sport Trac. It accelerates from 0 to 60 in a little more than 8 seconds, and can tow up to 7,160 lbs. The fuel economy is pretty darn decent too, getting 20 mpg on the highway.

Cargo capacity + lots of passenger room + power = the 2010 Ford Explorer Sport Trac. It’s an equation no one else seems to have mastered, but that’s all right. Just so long as Ford’s doing the smart math so you can get the vehicle that you want.

And you can get it at your favorite Omaha Ford dealer right here at Rusty Eck.