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The Story of Our '08 Explorer

With more and more travel between St. Louis, Charlotte, and elsewhere, my wife Bonnie and I had been looking for a vehicle to replace our 17 year old Expedition. Having driven two that are in the family, we were really considering the current generation of Explorer but just couldn't bring ourselves to spending that kind of money on a third vehicle in a two driver household.

One of the things that inspired me to take a look at the last generation of Explorers was the satisfaction one of my bosses had with his '05 company Explorer. With more and more out of town work, he had been driving allot of miles. One time I asked him how many miles he had on it, he told me to take a look.... :shocked: 400,xxx miles!




As mentioned above, I have driven the current generation Explorers and really liked the power and how they drove. With the current engine offerings in mind......:



......and using the base 3.5 engine as my baseline, I researched the older, '08-'10 Explorer engine specs:



I was leaning towards specifying the V8 in my search criteria, but what really galvanized that thought was the EPA fuel economy. :scratch:



Sooooo, I gave a try at searching nationwide for 2008-2010 V8 Explorers under 45,000 miles. About 10 showed up, among them this one owner 2008 Eddie Bauer with 18,5xx miles caught my eye.




The Carfax came up clean, the OASIS showed it had never been back to the dealer for any warranty work of any kind and the original selling dealer was the same dealership that currently had it for sale. The only downside was the location, Springfield, VA., a suburb of Washington D.C. After several phone calls and allot of hand wringing the decision was made to put down a deposit and fly to D.C. to take a look and possibly purchase.
 
**Note** The rest of this post is my feeble cheesball attempt to copy the fine 'pictorial travelog' that taxreliever Ken posted documenting his trip home from South Carolina with the '79....:eek:

I had a 6:20am flight to D.C. but had to be at the airport 1 hr. prior to the boarding time of 5:50am...I've flown quite a bit in the past but up to this time hadn't flown in probably 15 years, so I didn't know what to expect. I was a guy carrying a small gym bag with a 1 way ticket. What could go wrong? :) Luckily, all was good. We took off on time to clear skies and a rising sun...



Soon we were flying over solid cloud cover:





On dissent into D.C.




On final, my first ever look at Washington D.C.

 
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Within minutes of my getting to the American Airlines passenger pickup area at Reagan International, a lady in a Fusion with a Sheehy Ford front plate arrived to pick me up and take me to the dealership.

Upon our arrival THIS is what I first saw and texted a picture of to Bonnie: :devil:



Bonnie said:
Holy Crap! Will that cashier check cover that? :eek:

Then it was down to the business at hand, taking a look at the Explorer I had traveled there to see...



 
And finally home.....3/4 of the fleet:







The whole ordeal went flawlessly, from the flight to D.C., to being picked up at the airport within minutes of my arrival, to the Explorer being everything it was represented to be, the friendly folks at Sheehy Ford-Springfield, and to the 1,015 mile drive back home. A special thanks to sales professional,Tavia Adams and finance manager, Sabrina Morgan.
 
Thats a really nice looking Explorer Brad and great pics too - i really love long distance road trips like that.
With Low miles and economy like that i'd say you'll have a great run out of it for a long time.
 

DNFXDLI

The Token Canadian
Staff member
Cool story and pics Brad!
 

taxreliever

Licensed to Represent!
14,695
287
Maine
Nice story. Looks like a beautiful ride. Not a dent, but, nonetheless.................

smilieIagree smiliewhathesaid haha...exactly. ....but awesome story and glad it went as flawless as it did!

It is a beautiful truck. I love the two tone.
 

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