Glad to hear you've had good experiences with your Fords. I have friends who drive Expeditions and like them - plus put on many trouble-free miles.
I have a ten-year-old GMC Suburban that'd doing great. Will replace it with a new one when I start having too many problems with the '93.
My experience with GM vehicles has been excellent, for the most part. The worst one I had was an "84 El Dorado. The engine failed early (was replaced under warranty.) Other odd problems popped up from time to time, causing me to trade it once the warranty ended. Replaced it with an '87 Chevy Caprice that was nearly bullet-proof, mechanically. Most durable GM car I ever owned, traded it with 100,00 miles on (still got a good allowance) for the Suburban.
Ford better get its act together in engineering and quality control or few will have the experience you've described IMHO.
We have never owned any GM product. My dad always had Studes (now he has a diesel Bimmer slug that is almost 30 years old and just keeps on). The Torino was our first car after my husband and I got married, then we had a '72 TR-6 (Prince of Darkness! Two, count 'em, TWO electrical fires), a Bimmer 2002tii (great car! the differential fell out on the street though) an old Toyota Landcruiser ute (off-roading in that thing triggered the birth of my first child - I still see it rolling around town, it will never die), a Volvo 245 DL wagon (reliable but dull - typical first baby car), a Volvo 4 door sedan (a rusted out dog, but it ran, and we only paid 2,000 clams for it in 1990!), then a Windstar, then the Explorer, then the Expedition (my 6'6" 240 # husband was pretty cramped in the Explorer).
We did have one Ford dog -- that execrable Windstar minivan with the horrible 3 liter engine. That stinking thing blew its head TWICE, once at 40k and again at 65k - the second time it literally separated from the block in huge clouds of steam that engulfed the cabin - I was on the shoulder and out of it with the Halon extinguisher in my hot sweaty hand in about 2 seconds - I was convinced it had exploded and was about to burn to the ground. I will say that the dealer was very nice about it and (1) fetched me within 30 minutes from the side of the road (2) gave me a free rental car (3) waived our warranty repair deductible (4) gave us a REALLY good trade-in allowance, much more than the car was worth. The chief mechanic said everybody knew that Ford had screwed the pooch on that one. Ford eventually came clean and offered reimbursements and various free stuff to those of us unfortunate enough to have bought a Windstar, but we weren't out of pocket so we didn't file a claim. But the dealer was such a gentleman about the whole thing that we've kept coming back (and recommended them to our friends as good honest guys).