Ranger,
What I did point out was that since the inception of the Trac, Ford has known that the OEM shocks have a short life span and have done nothing to improve this life span and now have priced them and engineered their replacement to be overly expensive.
At no point did you make a connection to the earlier STs and shock life expectancy. The discussion was about an 07 and you just said the new ones are expensive to replace. The other issues you brought up in your second post were not mentioned in your first, so as I implied might be the case, there was more to the story as to why you are unhappy. That's fine, my comments were not meant with disrespect.
You state that Ford should be well aware of the issues of OEM shocks having a short life span and that they do nothing about it. Well, they did redesign the entire suspension, and I have yet to hear of any problems with the gen 2. Not to say they won't come up possibly, but so far, so good. Are you having problems with the shocks on the gen 2? (I had a gen 1 too, so, yes, I'm very well aware of the issue on those)
You mention fuel economy - I just returned from a trip with four adults, the back fully loaded and a soft car top carrier on top of the tonneau. I averaged 21.5 mpg with the V8. I never got that on my gen 1 with the v6. As far as I'm concerned, they did something to improve the mileage.
You mention poor brake life. Starting in '03 they went to disks on the rear and that helped. I got pretty good at replacing shoes and pads on my 02. For the gen 2 the brakes are light years better than my gen 1, so I would conclude they did something to make it better in terms of performance. As for life, I only 16k on them, but they look like new. I have not heard any consistent issues regarding brake life on the gen 2.
As for the transmission, clearly they still have something to work on. I have had no problems, but enough others have to suggest that there is something they could do better on the 6-speed.
In general, I feel Ford did a significant amount of redesign on the gen 2 making it a much better vehicle than my 02. Time will tell on the reliability side, but as I approach the one year mark I have had zero problems.
I could not make that claim about an Infiniti or a Toyota I've recently owned.
Oh, I thought I read here somewhere that Dave Turner Motorsports was developing a suspension kit for the Gen 2 ST to be available later this year. Probably not the option you are looking for, but a cool option.