Just curious to which year is deemed the most reliable? I tried looking around but no luck.

 

01? or 02+? not sure if they started in 01 or 02 with the revised sparkplug holes and coolant crossovers as far as the 4.6 goes. As far as chassis in general they are all the same.

 

01.5+ has the aluminum coolant crossover and the deeper sparkplug wells.

 

i tend to get myself into the last year of any body style....so i went for an 04.

my reasoning (may be flawed) is that Ford (or any company) has all the "kinks" worked out come the last year of any body style.

 

They all suck.

That's pretty good reasoning. 04's had a little better interior, GT's came with bigger hood scoop/side scoops, they came standard with smoked headlights, the heads have more threads for spark plugs (I think).

The same can be said for the 2001-2003's, except for the spark plug threads in the heads thing.

 

nope. the spark plug heads in the 01.5 ups should be the same as the 04. when they went with the new block in 01.5 they changed the heads too i believe.

i learned from my dad never to buy a car the first year it comes out. theres always unforseen flaws (coolant crossover and spark plugs in the early PI gt's for instance).

 

Ummmmm I'm going to say 2001, I've had two of em, and no issues at all, but I tend to take meticulous car of my cars!

 

they didnt fix the sparkplug threads till late 03.... so really, to be safe, 04 is the most reliable

also...not sure why theres two people in here talking about "deeper" spark plug wells???? no.

different amount of threads in the head is what was changed

 

My 2¢ worth, 2002-1/2 to 2004--for the reasons stated above, Ford had the bugs worked out by then--look for pink fuel injectors on '02s, that means it a 2002-1/2...

 

03-04 are the most reliable...the transmissions seem to hold up better in those years than they do in the earlier years. I dont beat the tar out of my car and my 2002 transmission is shot. My friend is running stock clutch and stock transmission with a 125 shot and it shifts and drives perfectly. So i think that all the 03/04 cars got all the most recent TSB and recalls done on them from factory to make them have very few problems.