Ford sponsors KC family on cross-country driving trip

During several stops on a month-long, family road trip from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Maine, in a 2016 Ford Explorer Platinum, 39-year-old Jeremy Collins captured many moments in his mind that will stick with him.

One of them occurred when Collins saw his 5-year-old daughter, Sela Muir Collins, develop a liking for an activity that he enjoys doing.

“I grew up with a love of horses, and watching my daughter fall in love with horses was a very special memory for me,” Collins said. “Her joy of experiencing horseback riding for the first time was really special.”

If you ask his wife, Tricia, and 7-year-old son, Zion Ray, about the road trip that started in early October and ended in early November, the memorable moments would probably be wide-ranging.

From exploring mountain ranges to traveling along back roads to something as simple as watching the sunset in one of the 19 states they traveled through, the Collins family experienced a once-in-a-lifetime journey thanks to the Ford Motor Company.

The Ford marketing department was looking for a way to promote its 2016 Explorer and all the things it can do on a cross country road trip over rugged land.

The Collinses, who live in Kansas City, were discovered by Ford through social media.

“We did a road trip early in the summer and along the way did a lot of story-telling through social media feeds,” Collins said. “It was pretty well received. A producer was watching while they (Ford) were preparing to do this project. They saw what I was doing with my family and approached us.

“They put a lot of the decision making in our hands, which I thought was pretty commendable. They wanted us to do what we wanted to do. I think the group of people making decisions over there in the marketing team is pretty smart to reach out to real people and not actors.”

Collins said Ford left much of the decision making about what routes to take to the family. Collins took it a step further and allowed his son and daughter to use an atlas to help plan the trip.

“We kind of put a lot in their hands,” Collins said. “I had some ideas of what I wanted to do. My wife had some ideas. So we decided to plot it out as a family and let them get involved in navigation.”

Collins once owned a Ford Ranger, but he had never driven a Ford Explorer before.

“I learned it was a lot of fun to drive,” he said. “I went into it blind. I didn’t read anything about it ahead of time. I didn’t educate myself. There were a lot of great surprises as we learned to use it. It was a Platinum model so there were a lot of bells and whistles. It was really great for our trip.”

The sticker price for an Explorer Platinum is $52, 970. To learn more about it, visit www.ford.com/suvs/explorer/trim/platinum/.

“The whole vision of the project was for us to take their vehicle and experience it and then go back to our normal lives,” Collins said.

After the trip, the family was featured on Ford Motor Company videos. Several of the videos were put on YouTube and one of them has more than 938,000 views. The videos give a glimpse of some of the terrain the Collins family drove on to reach their destination.

The trip was definitely an educational experience for Collins’ two children. They visited national parks and learned about geography, nature, biology and history.

Of course, Collins had to make sure Zion was keeping up with school work with his third-grade classmates.

“We collaborated with his third grade teacher and showed her what our plan was, and she gave us assignments he could turn in and things the rest of the classes was reading and he was reading along the way,” Collins said.

Initially, Collins wanted to go from Portland to Portland using only backroads. He learned that wasn’t feasible, especially with two young children.

“Number one, the more we researched it, there were some risks we weren’t willing to take with the kids, and number two, it would take a really long time. We definitely navigated through some highways and roads, which made it go quicker.”

Collins said watching the family work together as a team on decision making was really special to him.

“Some particular things I have always wanted to see, and seeing them with my family for the first time was really great,” he said. “City of Rocks in Idaho was one of them. It is just a beautiful place of granite tower of rocks. I’m a rock climber so that was special for me.”

The conclusion of the trip was just as memorable. They went to Acadia National Park in Mount Desert Island, Maine.

“It was a favorite location for all of us,” Collins said. “It is such a striking contrast of nature where the forest meets the ocean. It was a pretty spectacular place to call our finish line for the trip.”

After the trip was over, they returned the Explorer to Ford and flew back to Kansas City.

“The trip was great,” Collins said. “The business that I am in, I am in and out of town a lot. It is what it is. I don’t particularly want it that way. To have the time to spend together and not on a little short trip – a true extended time together – was great for all of us.”

This story was originally published January 29, 2016 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Ford sponsors KC family on cross-country driving trip."