This Explorer-based pickup debuted for the 2001 model year as Ford’s answer to buyers who wanted the comfort and cabin packaging of an SUV with a small open bed. Built on the body-on-frame Explorer architecture of the era, it filled a niche between a sport-utility and a compact pickup, and it quickly became one of Ford’s more unusual mainstream truck offerings. The original run lasted through the 2005 model year.
Ford did not offer a 2006 model-year version, creating a pause in the nameplate’s history. The vehicle then returned for 2007 with a redesigned second generation that was more closely aligned with the contemporaneous Explorer family while keeping the crew-cab, short-bed formula that defined the model. That second production period continued through the 2010 model year, after which the nameplate ended as Ford moved the Explorer line toward a unibody crossover direction.
Because the nameplate appeared, paused for an intervening model year, and then returned, it is best understood as having two distinct production periods rather than one uninterrupted run. Its appeal today is largely historical: it represents a distinctive phase in Ford truck and SUV design when automakers were experimenting with hybrid body styles to broaden the utility of familiar nameplates.