[kinoxi]

I personally wouldn’t buy a Windstar. I’ve heard of more than one instance of an Aerostar with 300,000 plus miles on it however. They changed the design and it didn’t (doesn’t) work as well.

[Spktyr]

The Ford Aerostar was a hybrid truck/car design, being that it was RWD and used a frame as part of its unibody. Most of its running gear was taken from the Ranger and Explorer trucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Aerostar

The Windstar, however, is a Taurus made into a minivan.

[brownsfan]

“I personally wouldn’t buy a Windstar. I’ve heard of more than one instance of an Aerostar with 300,000 plus miles on it however. They changed the design and it didn’t (doesn’t) work as well.”

Totally different vehicle. The Aerostar was a van. A rear wheel drive shrunken van. The Windstar was a poorly designed and built front wheel drive station wagon pretending to be a van. The Windstar was so bad that they slightly modified it and called it the Freestar, (to get away from the bad name made by the Windstar).

[mowowie]

My buddy is into older minivans to haul his windsurfer crap around, he’s had Both the Aerostar and now has a GMC Safari AWD (Astrovan) Where the Aerostar was a much more functional van and had a lot of cool features it was an over-engineered piece of crap where almost everything broke. The Safari where not nearly as functional has FAR better reliability and my friend loves it.