2012 Ford Expedition

Modern life has become so hectic that entire cottage industries have popped up to profit from convenience. No time to make a cup of joe? Stop by Starbucks. No time to wash the pooch? Drop Fido off at the doggy salon. No time to cook dinner? Order gourmet readymade meals online. The 2007 Ford Expedition Limited makes life easier, but like any form of convenience it'll cost you.

The optioned-out 2007 Ford Expedition Limited 4x4 I recently tested came with all manner of amenities, but the $39,925 base price jumped to $48,430. Think of it as the automotive equivalent of buying your veggies whole or already sliced in neat little packages.

Comfort and Safety
What you get for your initial $40K is no small potatoes. Even before adding all the options, the Expedition Limited comfortably and safely hauls eight people. The comfort is thanks to the standard, leather-trimmed, front-row captain's chairs. Both heated and cooled, the seats feature 10-way adjustment and two memory-position settings.

The safety aspect arrives via Ford's Personal Safety System, which includes driver and passenger dual-stage airbags, front seat side-impact airbags and the company's Safety Canopy. This side-curtain airbag system provides protection for outboard passengers in all three rows of seating. Like all Expeditions, the Limited is equipped with Ford's AdvanceTrac electronic stability control with Roll Stability Control (RSC), which uses a proprietary roll sensor to help keep the big sport ute shiny side up.

Convenience and Style
Standard on the Expedition Limited are power folding and heated mirrors with memory position, and Ford's exclusive PowerFold feature drops the third-row seat flat to the floor at a push of a button. The second-row seats' CenterSlide middle section independently moves forward 11 inches for easier access to a small child (like my 6-year-old son) from the front seats. Even small touches like the fan-speed control and climate-temperature buttons on the steering wheel make a big difference in convenience—and help keep your hands on the wheel.

Style-wise, the Expedition presents a formidable façade, with its monochromatic grille and fascia, tinted headlight covers and deep-set fog lights. The test vehicle's sleek black paint was offset by chrome on the door handles and badges, luggage rack, exhaust tip and 20-inch wheels. Even the gauges in the instrument cluster sport cool chrome-colored borders.

The Expedition Limited is not all show and no go, thanks to a 5.4-liter Triton V8 which supplies 300 horsepower and 365 lb-ft of torque. The V8's thrust is well-delivered via a class-exclusive six-speed automatic transmission. Although the growl of the big engine and aggressive appearance of our black-on-black Expedition was anything but subtle, the ride was well-mannered courtesy of a fully independent suspension which helped isolate the response of each wheel. But like most large SUVs, the Expedition was painful at the pump, averaging only about 14 mpg in town and 19 on the highway.

Big-Ticket Accessories
To get even more convenience out of the Expedition, you'll need to gauge if particular accessories are worth the outlay. Big-ticket accessories include the navigation and rear-seat entertainment systems. The $1,995 nav system built into the radio offers voice activation and displays major buildings in 20 cities to help you get your bearings. But with the price of portable navs dropping and the car-to-car convenience they offer, it's hard to justify spending that kind of coin on an embedded nav, even with advanced features.

There are plenty of aftermarket rear-seat entertainment systems that offer an 8-inch LCD monitor, two sets of wireless headphones and a remote control like the one that's a $1,500 option in the Expedition. And while some aftermarket rigs have the ability to play different sources over each headphone, so that two backseat passengers can watch and listen to a separate media source, none offer the ability to listen to any source via the head unit in the dash (AM, FM, SIRIUS Satellite Radio or CD), while the driver and other passengers simultaneously listen to the same source or a different one over the audio system.

The rear entertainment system also has auxiliary A/V inputs to add another entertainment source and a jack for wired headphones, and the driver has full control over the system via controls on the radio in the dash. Try getting that much flexibility from the aftermarket at that price.

Easy Does It
Other options include a $675 Convenience Package that buys a Reverse Sensing System to alert the driver to the presence of objects behind the vehicle with audible warnings, power adjustable pedals with memory, a sun visor with Universal Garage Door Opener buttons and the ability to remotely vent the rear quarter windows via switches in the overhead console. All of this seems like a bargain compared to the $495 you have to pay for a power liftgate or $950 for a power moonroof.

So it boils down convenience at a price. Do you want to raise your vehicle's dusty liftgate with your own two hands, or pay to do it at a push of a button. The 2007 Ford Expedition comes loaded with safety and convenience features, and for those who wish to make life even easier, there's options galore for the Starbucks' set.

Doug Newcomb has been writing about car electronics since 1988, as editor of Car Audio and Electronics, Car Stereo Review, Mobile Entertainment, Road & Track Road Gear and as a freelance writer. His new book, Car Audio for Dummies, is available from Wiley Publications. He lives in Hood River, Oregon.