Road Report: Ford Pornstar Minivan

It is our pleasure to report that the last rear-drive Ford Childstar minivan was removed from service last week in the Savannah suburb of Douche Bag, Georgia, when the 3.0l engine seized on a trip to Flash Foods for Twinkies, Doritos, USA Gold Cigarettes, Red Dog Beer, and Lotto tickets. The 300-pound foodservice worker who drove it suggested that her ex-husband may have removed the plug from the oil pan in retaliation for her reaction to finding him in a compromising position with the french fry girl from the Hardees on Stinky Marsh Road.

The good news is that Ford has brought a replacement for the Childstar, the Pornstar. The front-drive Pornstar is every bit of the driving experience that a Childstar driver would expect without any challenges to long ingrained concepts of vehicle behavior.

The good thing has to be moved out of the way first. The engine is better than the overtaxed Vulcan 3.0 in the Childstar. The Essex 3.8 is more suited for moving the 4400-pound van. While specific power and torque figures are not available, driving the van will tell one instantly: This is a LOT of motor. It's enough motor to encourage the driver to hunt down eighties model Muscle Cars at stop lights.

But don't get put into the turns. The steering may actually be Rack and Peanut. The power steering pump justifies the van's name by moaning and groaning at temperatures under 45 degrees. The feedback through the wheel may suggest that the driver insulted the steering's personal hygiene. It does not communicate. Indeed, the steering could not be less numb were the steering wheel connected by radio.

The Pornstar is just like the Childstar, which shared its steering box with the '77 Granada, itself no paragon of control dynamics.

Forget trying to stop, either. The brakes may as well be connected by dial-up Internet. The hardware itself seems to be sound, but the point where the driver interfaces with the brakes starts off as a heavy push through six inches of mashed potatoes, thirty seconds of panic, followed by anti-lock judder, and finally, a relatively short, straight stop.

A novice driver invited to try this van suggested that Ford's demise could not come soon enough for her after using the brakes. Her concise reaction was, "Damn, your brakes suck."

The Pornstar is equipped with removable seats. It should be phrased that the seats are removable in theory only, being as the seats are heavy enough to have their own gravitational field and may affect tides if the van is driven in coastal areas. The seats do have a wide range of adjustment, and are quite comfortable, even for a catnap in the parking lot of a Stuckey's.

The sound system is a Philco Stereophonic 8-track player. It requires two different adapters to play Hip Hop, but people will give you Disco all day long, and no adapter is needed.

Ford has equipped the Pornstar SE with an onboard computer, which offers instantaneous calculation of range, economy, oil life, NASDAQ quotes, airline schedules and whether or not the light in your fridge is on, providing that you set it up correctly. The computer is also multilingual, offering responses in English, Farsi and Mongolian.

The rear-view mirror has an interesting feature, a little green LED which seems to perform no actual function and blinks on and off at random. There are lots of little plastic areas everwhere for little fiddly things that would normally hit the driver in the head during a panic stop. It has a primo selection of cupholders which feature sticky remnants of Capri Sun juice pouches from the factory.

The safety features include air bags, for those who feel that a collision is not complete without a smelly explosion in the driver's face. There are lots of seat belts and really stout bumpers that produce extremely satisfying fragments in an encounter with a tumbleweed on I-20 in Texas. The van weighs the same thing as a '55 Cadillac, so it ought to do fine in a crash with anything smaller than a Hummer H1.

Body hardware and solidity may leave a little bit to be desired. Imperfect pavement starts the larger body panels on a frantic drumming that matches Green Day's Tre Cool for velocity if not technical mastery. The suspension has a boingy feel that comes up through the seat and evokes the experience of thunking a tub of GoJo hand cleaner. Everything seems to be solidly attached, but the racket makes one wonder for how long.

The power door is a neat little convenience, allowing miscellaneous crap to be thrown into the passenger compartment directly, avoiding the secondary process of allowing it to migrate under a seat first. The vastness of the passenger area allows accumulation of at least two Hefty bags worth of Taco Bell and Burger King wrappers before the Department of Transportation requires the van to pass through a Weigh Station.

Economy is good, with the caveat found below. If everything is set as it should be, the Pornstar gets about 17 miles per gallon in town, and 24 on the road.

The automatic transmission is usually smooth and strong, except when going between 55 and 60 when it feels like it's going blubba-blubba-blubba. Shift it out of Overdrive, a cute little button on the end of the column lever that frequently gets mashed inadvertently when parking and the steering wheel blocks the light and you wonder how the hell you only got 14 miles per gallon at three blessed dollars a gallon, and the blubba-blubba-blubba effect goes away. That's also the only real ergonomic complaint.

The Pornstar is equipped with a dual HVAC system, allowing mischevous children in the back to select a fundamentally opposite temperature from the front of the van, thus fogging up the driver's glasses. Such an event precedes a loud, graphic hypothesis related to the destinies of Disney Channel "Tween" performers.

Many of the Pornstar's guts come from the second-generation Taurus, a car that withered in the market for lack of research funds for an actual engine. That car steered and stopped fine, so apparently those parts didn't get approved to cross the border into Canada, where the Pornstar's factory is located. This is another argument for open borders.

So, is the Ford Pornstar a future classic? No. Is it inspiring? No. Is it going to make a lot of trips to convenience stores for Twinkies, Doritos, USA Gold cigarettes, Red Dog Beer, and Lotto tickets? Oh, hell, yes.

300-pound foodservice workers of America, your ride is here.