Time was, back before anybody was calling them “sport utility vehicles,” back when you had just the CJ and the K-5 Blazer and the Bronco, small trucks were tools, not toys. Almost all of them had real 4-wheel drive, defined as any system which required a spare pair of pants to use when locking hubs in the mud. They rode roughly, were handfuls on pavement, and towered over traffic. They were likely to spend most of their lives on dirt roads or no roads, whether carrying crews to fight forest fires or The Guys to that secret fishing hole.

    Then Ford and GM came out with smaller versions of the pickups on which the K-5 and Bronco were based, and a funny thing happened: The more maneuverable, more manageable smaller trucks started showing up at PTA meetings and in church parking lots. This trend only accelerated when the first small SUVs, Ford’s Bronco II and Chevy’s S-Blazer, hit the street. They had the easier-to-drive characteristics of the smaller pickups, and a rear seat. Suddenly, small trucks became, not an adjunct to the family car, but often a replacement for it.

    Those first SUVs came across like -- well, remember the scene in Raiders of Indiana Jones in the classroom, in coat and tie? You knew it didn’t look right, that underneath he was more comfortable in leather jacket and fedora, thrilling to the rhythms of the Amazon. Those first small SUVs were still trucks at heart, more UV than S.

    A second wave of small SUVs, some from overseas, went a long way toward civilizing the breed. But none hit the mark like Ford’s Explorer, purpose-built to bring the advantages of a burly off-roader to every car pool in America. For 1995, General Motors has redone its Blazer (no S- designation anymore, as the former big Blazer is now the Tahoe) and its twin, the GMC Jimmy, from the ground up. Ford has countered with an extensive freshening of the Explorer. We took to the streets to learn whether the grandsons of trucks can thrill to the rhythms of the Wal-Mart.

Chevrolet Blazer: Simple Is as Simple Does

    The new Blazer’s lines are very clean and taut. Despite a new drooped nose, its S-10 heritage is evident back to the very vertical B-pillar. From there, though, things take a more radical turn, with a steeply sloped C-pillar and angled backlight. It’s like a Reuben sandwich; the overall effect is very pleasing, even though that’s hard to imagine from the individual elements. (For example, just looking at the greenhouse back to the C-pillars, I was immediately reminded of the Ford EXP. That’s not a good memory.)

    The Splendid Co-Driver, who has more taste in her little finger than I do even counting toes, liked the wraparound-glass look of the rear, especially the match of the C-pillar rake to that of the backlight. She found the nose solid without being dumpy, and overall thought the Blazer looked substantial without being either a station wagon or, as she put it, “a reckless vagabond vehicle.” Forgive her, folks. It’s her first truck.

    To realize how strongly GM has targeted the family market with the Blazer, consider this: the Blazer is the first vehicle ever to receive a perfect 4 Golden Cupholders on our Interior Utility Index. In fact, 4 may not be enough. The Blazer is like an Ikea kitchen with wheels. Whatever your stuff, there’s a place for it. To wit:

    -- The usual top-opening cargo bin, this time with a lift-out flocked tray for smaller items;

    -- A flocked pocket with cassette-sized slots;

    -- Just above that, two molded-in cupholders with rubber inserts; pull ‘em out to park your Big Gulp;

    -- A flocked flat tray

    -- Coin holders molded for dimes, nickels, and quarters;

    And all that’s just the center console! There’s also:

    -- A slot under the radio with a rubber bottom for cassettes or whatever;

    -- Map pockets in the doors;

    -- An overhead spine between the seats with tightly-focused, aimable reading lights for each front and rear passenger and the cabin light;

    -- Also in that spine, a pop-down compartment fitted and padded for your sunglasses; a square compartment for tissues, cigarettes, or who-knows, with an elastic strap to hold them in; and a compartment with a button on it; you pop in your garage-door opener and never have to hunt for it again. The SC-D thinks the whole storage spine is “way cool” and thinks it should be available separately, so we could put one in our car. All it lacks is a stewardess call button.

    Oh, there’s a glove compartment, too, with two more cupholders inside. It’s kinda small, but with so many other places to put things, we’re not complaining.

    And the seatbacks have map pockets. And the rear seat passengers get their own storage compartments and a cupholder. “So many cupholders, it needs a bathroom,” said the owner of an older Blazer.

    Her Splendidness and I were both awed by one simple but thoughtful touch: a small rubber pad on the steering column beneath the ignition so your keys don’t jangle. Why this hasn’t been standard since the Daimler escapes us. In the same category, the Blazer supplies two extra 12-volt sockets to either side of the lighter, to power camping equipment, Walkpersons, whatever.

    Interior plastics (mostly light grey on our test vehicle) are simple, but not cheap looking thanks to lots of texturing. The exceptions to this rule are the smaller switches, like the power lock and window switches, which have a just-snapped-off-the-sprue look and feel. The interior appears to be easily cleanable, should you actually do some off-roading or otherwise import mud. Controls for ventilation are big and rubberized, although labeling isn’t functional, with “max, norm, heat, vent, blend” instead of descriptions or pictures of where the air is going.

    The cloth-covered seats are firm and comfortable, even on long trips. The cloth exerts a tenacious grip on your sitting parts, keeping you properly in place. They’re also easy to get into, because the Blazer’s doorsills sit lower to the ground than other SUVs.

    The good, thick steering wheel is a bit large in diameter, forcing a tradeoff between instrument visibility and thigh room. That, the SC-D points out helpfully, may say more about the test drivers than the vehicle. Potential buyers who like airbags should note that only the driver gets one with this vehicle.

    Front passengers may be annoyed by a branch off the transmission hump that extends into the passenger foot well, forcing feet to the right.

    The Blazer’s instrument panel is clear, although the Splendid Co-Driver found it a tad busy. On either side of the large speedometer and tachometer are gauges for water and oil temperatures, fuel level, and volts. All four of the ancillary gauges are the same size, and large compared to the primary instruments. The SC-D, a pilot, thought that the less important gauges should be less prominent, as they are in aircraft. On the same grounds, she was delighted with the aircraft-style dual-visor system found in both the Blazer and Explorer, which allows the main sun visor on each side to function normally while providing a smaller visor to fill in gaps.

    Rear seats are easy to reach, as the front passenger’s seat slides far forward. Once in place, you’ll find generous legroom. Rear-seaters can also enjoy elbow-friendly padded surfaces atop the rear wheel wells, 3-point belts, and flip-out vent windows. The rear seats fold to a flat cargo floor.

    There’s not a lot of cargo room in the 2-door with the rear seat up; much of what there would be is occupied by the full-size spare tire (about which more later). The 4-door Blazer is 6.5 inches longer, all behind the front seats, adding 8 cubic feet of cargo volume. Because of the sloped backlight, though, stacking cargo is difficult.

    A cute gimmick (also shared by both vehicles) is a combination compass/outside temperature gauge in the overhead panel. Husbands note: having a compass displayed prominently makes it harder to pretend not to be lost.

    The doors on the rear storage bins fit poorly and were flimsy. Aside from that, fit and finish on the Blazer looked very good, with a squeak from the rear hatch over rough roads being the only other sample defect.

ON THE ROAD

    Darwin would love the Chevy Blazer. In an attempt to adapt to as many market environments as possible, the Blazer has spawned a series of mutations: Buyers can choose from no less than five suspension options, ranging from an old-style pure off-road setup to the street-tuned version on our test vehicle. While the new dual control-arm front retains coil springs with a leaf spring rear, spring rates are tuned for the specific application, and our “Touring” version featured deCarbon gas shocks.

    The result was a good and un-trucklike ride, with handling that astonished us. To be sure, you’re up high, but as the SC-D -- who’d never driven a truck before -- testified, because of its size and handling, anybody can get into Blazer and drive competently, despite its height and “truck” aura. You can’t quite drive it like a car, because its responses are different and somewhat less precise, but the Blazer brings SUVs much closer to “car” handling than previous competitors.

    One immediately observable shortcoming is that in extreme turns, it’s quite possible to graunch the front tires into the inside fender well.

    That the 235-70R15 Michelin XW4s (which come mounted on 5-spoke alloy wheels) are not optimized for off-road use is obvious from the fact that they turned up on our recent Ford Windstar and Taurus wagons. They’re not very sticky, but do give a quiet ride.

    Indeed, the Blazer is an uncommonly quiet vehicle to drive. Ambient noise around town is very low, similar to the Monte Carlo we recently tested. There’s a little booming from the rear on rough roads, but you only notice because the rest is so unusually quiet. At speed, too, the only significant noise is a bit of wind from the rear. With its quiet and comfort, the Blazer could certainly be used for long trips, even with two people in the back. Chevy’s worked hard on this one, and it shows.

    Step on the right pedal and the 4.3-liter Vortec V-6 pulls right now. It’s strong and smooth, and only gets loud when you floor the gas. In a week of our mostly-urban driving, the Blazer returned 15.5 MPG.

    Braking from the 4-wheel discs is also smooth, but suffers from the generic GM disease (except Saturn): too little initial braking. ABS is standard on the Blazer, so there’s no reason to delay the onset of braking. The Blazer turns nimbly, though, with a small radius, and it’s barely disturbed by crosswinds. Overall, handling is very good, and the blend of handling and power made the Blazer a guaranteed grin machine.

    The Blazer scored “Impending Whiplash” on our Cranial Rotation Factor, with especially strong responses from drivers of other large vehicles like Caprices, vans, and other SUVs.

    You can see all those reactions well, too, because outward visibility is better than in previous Blazers, according to the owner of one, and is aided by oversized rear view mirrors and the sloped hood, which drops from view. Those thick C-pillars don’t help, but a bigger hindrance is the spare tire. It stands vertically right where you have the least view to begin with, the driver’s side corner, and widens the blind spot. If it were flat on the floor, it would take up cargo space. Our recommendation: Get the optional exterior carrier.

    An effective rear defroster and rear wiper with delay (as all should have) kept the smoked backlight clear. That smoked rear glass renders the night function of the rear-view mirror largely redundant, especially because few headlights are high enough to shine into a vehicle this tall.

    There’s lots of room in the engine compartment, with good access to plugs. Fluid fills and dipsticks are labeled and color-coded.

    We’ll save our summation for the end of the joint review, but the 1995 Blazer is an impressive piece of work indeed.

Ford Explorer: Going for Baroque

    Ford had a difficult task in freshening the Explorer. The original enjoyed such success that change might endanger sales. Yet the stiffening competition demanded a response.

    The Explorer team took a twofold approach. One was to increase the safety of the Explorer, redesigning the instrument panel to accommodate dual airbags while increasing ease of operation and legibility. The other was to restyle the front end, to make it more aerodynamic and modern. The resulting exterior, including a slightly sloping hood, looks like a significantly different vehicle back to the A-pillar, but not beyond.

    The new front end doesn’t look like anything else on the street, though, with the former egg-crate grille and rectangular headlights replaced by a more curved grille and narrow, high-intensity headlights surrounded by HUGE turn signals.

    The headlight/turn signal combination has a wicked look to it, but the overall effect varies according to which Explorer you look at. On lower-trim versions, the monochromatic grille surround integrates the new front fairly well. On our tested high-zoot Eddie Bauer, though, the grille surround is chrome, and a lot of it. In our opinion, the effect is -- well, politeness prevents us. We will, however, note that some other drivers nearly hurt themselves snapping their heads around to look at that new front.

    The Bauer package includes new, wider sill extensions and fender flares, resulting in a much flashier appearance than previous Explorers. Indeed, compared to the almost-monochrome, sleek Blazer, which whispers, the Explorer shouts “look at me!” And people do; based on their reactions, the Eddie Bauer Explorer gets a Cranial Rotation Factor of “Full Linda Blair”.

    Part of that redesign shows the difference between a clean-sheet-of-paper vehicle and one that’s updated. Ford could have reduced the size of the turn signals and lowered the Explorer’s hoodline. But that runs into a rule of even heavily freshened vehicles; you can’t change the hardpoints.

    In the Explorer’s case, the compromise comes in a visual disconnect between the curved grille and front end (and those new sills and flares) and the squareness of the rest of the vehicle. The overall effect is akin to Wilber Marshall in a tutu.

    That dichotomy carries over to the interior. The Explorer is noticeably higher to step into than the Blazer; once you do, you’re conscious that you see a good bit more hood, and that the whole truck is much squarer and more vertical; in short, you feel right away that you’re in a truck. But the redesigned interior is curved, almost plush, with more style than the Blazer.

    The Explorer’s instrument cluster contains the same gauges as the Blazer’s, but is less busy, and easier to read. The Splendid Co-Driver preferred the Explorer’s panel layout, especially the cleaner instruments with less frequently used readouts downplayed. Ancillary instruments are given less than full arcs, which differentiates them visually from the speedometer and each other.

    Gadgets are in evidence here, too. The aforementioned compass/temperature module is in a ceiling binnacle, along with a garage-door opener slot and the map lights. And Ford’s full-auto climate control system, which maintains a temperature you set, is smart enough to not start blowing heater air until the engine warms up sufficiently. And its labeling lets you tell the air where to go.

    But the Big Kahuna, the Banzai Pipeline of gadgets, is the Explorer’s trip computer. Understand, Ford is doing a good job of making these available across the line; they’re usually two-digit LEDs showing remaining fuel, miles to empty, instantaneous mileage and average mileage. The Explorer’s, though, is a full dot-matrix screen, located at the bottom of the center stack, which spells out not only those parameters but runs a systems check, testing oil level, battery charge status, and headlight and taillight bulb integrity. The SC-D, who’d never seen a trip computer in a car before, fell immediately in love with the remaining miles function, which addressed a lifelong fear of inaccurate fuel indicators. All in all, the trip computer is fun, if not terribly necessary.

    Our test Explorer carried the Ford/JBL audio system, which yielded good sound, albeit with busy controls.

    The panel lighting is Ford’s usual calm, pleasing green; not too bright, even on brightest setting. But because of that radio, and climate control, and other gadgets, driving the Explorer at night was somewhat like a visit to Toontown. With the radio’s many buttons, the trip computer flashing instantaneous mileage figures (the game became how high could you make it go?), the lit cruise control buttons (nice) and normal operations, the Explorer has more than 70 illuminated words, numbers and symbols staring at you. They could really use Saab’s black panel technology, which shuts off the non-essential instruments. We really don’t need constant lighting on the radio buttons or climate control, for example; on-demand lighting would be enough. (The SC-D demurs in part; she likes that the power window and lock buttons are lit, which the Blazer’s weren’t.)

    Dash materials are more textured and finished-looking than the Blazer’s. The perforated leather seats are a matter of preference; they look good and feel nice (they’re wider than the Blazer’s), but leather tends to be yikes! cold in the winter and hot in the summer. (The SC-D prefers leather to velour; I go the other way.) Also, one wonders how it would stand up to the rugged use SUVs sometimes get. The seats have pneumatically-adjustable lumbar support, which on our test truck made a rude noise while inflating.

    The SC-D likes the cargo-area carpet better than Chevy’s; she says it has less pile, so use won’t make it fuzzy as quickly. The rear also gets a cargo net and cover to hide the goodies.

    Window switches have very good tactile feel, and are more sophisticated looking than the Blazer’s. They’re sculpted to be easily operable in the dark. And on an extremely picky interior design note, the ignition switch location is such that the keyless-entry transmitter dangles on my knee when driving. At first, I thought the Splendid Co-Driver was getting fresh.

    Although the Explorer is longer and wider than the Blazer, most interior dimensions are similar, with the Explorer ahead where there’s a difference. That changes when you get to the cargo compartment, where the Explorer’s high-cube design makes a meaningful difference in cargo volume, even when compared to the 4-door Blazer.

    Interior utility gets 2.5 Golden Cupholders. The front seat passengers get two small cupholders; rear seaters get two (although the bench rear seat can hold three.) But those rear passengers also get headrests, headphone jacks and radio tuning controls, à la minivan practice, which the SC-D (who grew up radioless in the back of a Vista Cruiser) found clever.

ON THE ROAD

    Outward visibility from the Explorer is superior to the Blazer’s, due primarily to the stand-up styling (and better spare tire placement.) Mirrors are adequately large. At night, the Ford’s much brighter headlights are immediately noticeable.

    The Explorer’s 4.0-liter six is a bit reluctant to wake up on cold mornings, but who among us isn’t? Once roused, it’s not as peppy as the larger Blazer engine, and more noisy. It returned 12.4 MPG in around-town driving.

    Handling comes from the same school as the Blazer’s; while not as good as the Chevy, it’s light-years ahead of the Explorer-twin Mazda Navajo we drove two years ago. The suspension seems to have higher spring rates than the Blazer; it’s more jouncy, and doesn’t seem to have quite the same wheel travel or road feel. In short, a shade more trucklike. The Explorer also seems to have a higher CG, with a hint more tippiness when cornering; on the plus side, you can crank the wheel harder without graunching the tires into the wheel well.

    Braking is strong and sure from the beginning, and the standard ABS comes in competently.

    At speed, the Explorer is noticeably more noisy inside than the Blazer. Part of that may be due to its less aerodynamic shape (which also accounts for more crosswind sensitivity); some of the fault goes to the engine. But the Explorer’s wider range is also part of the cause. Its 255/70R16 Firestone Wilderness ATs are mixed-use tires, with a more aggressive tread than the Chevy’s highway-only Michelins. They make more noise on the road, but will do more off it. (Those tires come on new 3-spoke chrome wheels.) That issue of utility versus comfort is one of buyer preference; what’s the vehicle for? And what tradeoffs do you want to make?

    Our truck novitiate notes that someone used only to driving regular cars could get comfortable here, but not as quickly as in Blazer. She also finds the brake release too far down for shorter people who need the seat high up, but gives kudos to the Ford interior folks because -- unusually -- she doesn’t need to take her hand off wheel to activate the turn signal!

SUMMING UP

    When you drive one of these vehicles, you really notice how many SUVs are around. Maybe it’s because they’re suddenly at eye level. At one light, we had a Ranger ahead of us, a Cherokee behind, a Cherokee going across the other way, a Bronco three ahead -- and this is in the suburbs.

    But that’s where these small trucks live nowadays. They’re carrying the family to the store, and the kids back to college.

    Both SUVs in our comparison are competent at a wide variety of tasks. They both represent major improvements to the breed, even when compared with last-generation models.

    The Blazer is a better around-town machine, in part because it was set up to be just that. It’s quiet, handles very well, and would be comfortable for long trips. While the Explorer has less finesse, it sports more room, especially in the cargo area, and generally better materials. Football linemen would drive the Explorer; quarterbacks would drive the Blazer.

    But which should you choose? That comes down to on two issues: style and price. These two trucks have very different styling, inside and out. It’s a subjective judgement. The Blazer’s tight and slick; the Explorer looks and feels bigger than it is, because it’s more upright and more squared-off.

    On a purse-strings note, though, there’s a significant difference. As tested -- and the options were similar -- the Blazer came in at $21,422. Since the Explorer was a pre-production model, we don’t have hard pricing information, but a similarly optioned ‘94 would have come in at over $24,000, and during our test, Ford announced a 15% price increase for 1995 Explorers. For us, the blend of handling, interior design, comfort, value, and fun put the Blazer on our list of Hard Drive Garage Gotta-Haves. For the street, at least, it’s our truck.

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