If you had to decide..

My mother would already like to know now because her insurance cycle runs in 3 month increments....First off a little backround on me:
I'm a Jaguar mechanic and working on Jaguars do not intimidate me because I'm "darned" (for lack of better emphasis) good at it. It doesn't matter if it's an XKE, Mark III, XJS (Although I HATE working on XJSs) or XJ6s. It's easier for me to work on them because I know every intricate detail about them which means working on other cars are of course, a breeze...
Anyways...

My mother is the original owner of her 1998 Ford Explorer. 175,000 miles, 4.0 litre, new rear end (Doing the rear end was not fun in a driveway in New England in February.) , leaf springs and brakes and the truck is in overall great condition. However she is the EPITOME of an aggressive driver and she beat the tar out of it. I drove it for 3 months last year while I was putting in a new engine in my Jaguar and I had no problems at all with it except it's going to need new struts and tyres. It gets 17MPG, and saves me a whopping $6 a fill up instead of driving my Jaguar.

That being said about the truck, here's my Jaguar:
1985 Jaguar XJ6 4.2 litre straight 6. 104,000 miles and I rebuilt the engine because...eh it's personal, but there wasn't a problem with the engine..I'll say I rebuilt it to clear my mind...Yeah that works..Anyways, there's only one problem with it , it needs a new upper ball joint...Regardless it's upper so I can drive it for a while before it becomes quite the concern. However I am hesitant to drive the car on the poor Rhode Island roads as they are pot-hole ridden. However I love driving my Jaguar but I don't know if I should subject it to the harsh roads and winter. Should I just pay my mom $100 a month to drive the truck and cover the Jag until the summer?

You have to choose between a Ford and a Jaguar.

You poor, poor lad.

Just think of it this way:

Which of the two would be higher up on the cool wall on Top Gear (the TV show). And choose that way.

well obvioulsy the jag would be "cool" and the explorer would be , well, about as far left on that wall as you could go, somewhere around the pink micra picture.

buy an old beater subaru outback or legacy - you can use it to haul parts - even next season, it'll be good in the snow, reliable, and despite not great milage, it will easily pull in better numbers than either of your other options.

My best friend had a subaru for 7 years and it finally died with 320,000 miles on it haha. Buying another vehicle is out of the picture...There's enough vehicles in that driveway, and adding another one is a little too much. What makes me so darned reluctant to drive my Jaguar is the fact you have to drop the rear transaxle to replace the brakes so even though the brakes are new..Yeah, I'm trying to reduce driving her as much as possible haha.