Running-Boards

Red arrow points at new running-boards. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Last December, while driving down to south Jersey to visit cousins and my 84-year-old aunt (their mother), I noticed a recent Ford Escape in a rest-stop parking-lot along the Pennsylvania-Turnpike Northeast-Extension.
It had running-boards, and they looked pretty good, as if the Escape had originally been styled with running-boards.
They masked or replaced the original rocker-panels, which I don’t like with their sculptured embossings.
They look like a factory part. I was tempted but didn’t ask.
So recently I asked the parts-guy at my Ford dealer if Ford made running-boards for the Escape.
They did, and they looked like what I had seen.
461 buckaroos. That’s a fairly sizable investment in a car I really like.
“Oh, so you can more easily step into your car?” a friend asked.
“No,” I said. “Because I think the original rockers look stupid.”
$64.50 to install ‘em. I had the Ford-dealer do it.
I’ve done things like this to previous cars. No bug-screens, tinted windows, wings, or side-window rain-visors.
Above all, no flames, and no chain-link license-plate holders.

• “FORD” stands for a number of things: -1) is “Fix-or-Repair-Daily, -2) “Found-on-Road-Dead,” and there’s a third which I won’t divulge in the interest of good taste and decorum.
• My car is a 2012 Ford Escape.
• A railfan friend of mine wants to repaint his silver Ford Econoline van with Santa Fe’s warbonnet paint-scheme =

Warbonnet Santa Fe passenger diesel.
Don’t know as he’ll actually do it — mostly just talk.