Interior and Cargo Capacities
The first Explorer offered trucklike room: low-40-inch legroom up front and mid-30s in the rear, with 32 to 42 cubic feet of cargo behind the rear seats, and 69–82 cubes max depending on body style.
The modern Explorer, now a three-row machine, expands those ideas, 43 inches in front, 39 inches in the second row, 32 in the third. Cargo space is reported as 16.3 cubes behind the third row, 46.0 behind the second, 85.8 max.
The Bronco Sport? Nearly a spec-sheet echo of the original two-door: 42.4/36.9 inches of legroom, 32.5 cubic feet of cargo aft of the second row, and between 60.2 and 65.2 cubic feet max.
Dimensionally, the Explorer line hasn’t followed a straight path; it forked. The nameplate kept growing upward, while the Bronco Sport quietly claimed the old footprint and made it modern.
Efficiency and Performance: The March of Time (And Turbos)
This is where the passing of decades is evident. The original Explorer’s 155–160-hp V-6 had a loyal, mulelike work ethic, but sprinting wasn’t its milieu. Its MotorTrend-tested 10.8-second 0–60 time was less “launch” and more “several polite requests to gather speed.” Fuel economy landed in the mid-teens (14–16/18–22 mpg city/highway using today’s correction factors), with real-world range depending heavily on patience and prayer.
The 2025 Bronco Sport, even in its humblest 1.5-liter three-cylinder form, does better, both at the pump and on the stopwatch. Its 180 hp is enough to dust the old truck, and the 250-hp turbo-four model snaps off 6.5-second 0-60 runs. Highway fuel economy brushes 30 mpg, something the first-gen Explorer would treat like fiction.
Today’s Explorer leaves both behind. The 300-hp turbo-four is already worlds quicker, but the 400-hp twin-turbo V-6 in the ST turns the big three-row into a surprisingly quick machine, hitting 60 mph in a reported 5.9 seconds. And despite the mass and muscle, efficiency can climb as high as 29 mpg highway with the base engine.
Performance has taken a generational leap. The slowest 2025 Explorer is still significantly quicker than the fastest first-gen. Even the Bronco Sport (the “small one”) laps the early-’90s Explorer in both fuel economy and acceleration.
