One of these days we will be buying a new car. Our Jeep Liberty is 7 years old and has 102,000 miles on it. Beginning to show it’s age. But it is paid for.
One of my favorite ways to decide what kind of car to buy is to rent one for a week or so. This week while we are up in Salt Lake City, we are renting a brand new Ford Edge. It has only about 500 miles on the odometer. In May 2013, we had rented a Ford Explorer. You get a much better feel for the vehicle than a 10 min test ride.
So the Ford Edge is the next size down from the Explorer. The Explorer is a wicked huge SUV. Back in the day when the Ford Explorer was the only SUV in the Ford lineup it was much smaller. The Edge is only slightly less huge.
The Edge is probably just a bit too big for my taste. Probably the Ford Escape might be a better fit. I had a little trouble parking. It was hard to see the yellow lines. As you see in the above picture, it’s not exactly centered in the parking space. It has a back up camera that comes on when you shift in to Reverse. It gives you an excellent wide angle view. I can see more than I can see with the mirrors. Very handy for backing out of a diagonal parking spot.
View of backup camera
So the Edge that we are driving is the “Limited” trim package with all the bells and whistles. The only thing it doesn’t have is the navigation package. Avis probably gets them that way so that they can upsell a GPS system for you to use for an extra $10 a day.
So it has the “Sync” system loaded. You can connect your iPhone by Bluetooth. You can make a phone call using the menu on the screen. It can play music from my phone. When I stop and get out, the phone pauses the playback and resumes playing exactly where you left off when you get back in the car. You can download (or is it upload) your entire contact database into the Sync system.
It has dual thermostat controls for driver side and passenger side vents. That would be a hit with Paula, seeing as I like cooler than she does. It has heated seats. Don’t need that feature in SoCal. Nice feature in cold climates like Boston, though.
Drive is very smooth. Doesn’t feel like your hitting 75 mph on the freeway. Has all of the steering wheel controls, cruise control on one side, audio system on the other.
It gets lousy gas mileage. The performance display says that we are averaging about 15 mpg on local driving. With gas prices in LA north of $4 per gallon, I might look at the hybrid version.
One feature that I find the Ford SUV’s lacking is that of a grab handle on the driver’s side door. There are handles on all of other doors. My Jeep Liberty has a grab handle on the driver door. I have trouble getting into and out of cars. For me, the handle is a “sine qua non”. Back in 2007, when we bought the Jeep, it was one of the features that swayed us from the Ford Escape to the Jeep Liberty.
Passenger Side
Driver’s Side
Trunk space is huge. Back seats are comfortable. The Ford has a lift hatch that opens pretty easy. Closing it is more of a challenge. Our Jeep has a door with the spare tire mounted on it. Which makes it kind of clunky. Ford has managed to hide the spare somewhere. Don’t know where they put it and for this adventure I don’t care.
It probably comes with a tow package, but I don’t need that. Don’t have a boat or RV anymore. That ship has sailed long ago. This Edge has all wheel drive rather than part time 4 wheel drive. I don’t particularly need either. I don’t see much snow these days living in LA. And I don’t intend to be taking it off-road either.
So the bottom line is that Ford Edge is not the car that we will be buying.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
So we get to the rental counter last Tuesday night and hand over my driver’s license and credit card. The woman at the counter types in the info on her computer and proceeds to tell me that they don’t have any Ford Escapes available. She then tells me that she can rent me a Ford Expedition for the same price. Thank you very little, I say.
calherewecome 