On short trips and longer journeys, you’ll find that the Ford Escape’s seats are about as comfortable as you’ll find in this segment. The second observation - that the original Escape, plus the second generation that followed it offered all the comfort of the bleachers at a high school football game - is also something that’s mercifully fallen by the wayside. If you’re someone who needs to feel like you’re extracting every mile per gallon possible out of your vehicle, there might be other choices to look into, but if you enjoy driving, the six-speed auto in the Escape makes it sound like you’re driving a car, rather than enjoying the monotonous drone of a Shop Vac. Ford is sacrificing a nominal increase in fuel economy for the sake of the driving experience. One of the things that makes the Escape - and I’m surprised I’m even writing this - fun to drive is that Ford has held the line on a more traditional six-speed automatic transmission. Many manufacturers who make vehicles in this class are opting for continuously variable transmissions. Over at Honda - a company that for years was considered an engine manufacturer which also happened to build cars - the all-new CR-V offers 75hp per liter, and with almost half a liter more in displacement doesn’t come within 40hp of the 2.0-liter in the Escape. of torque at a reasonable 3,000 rpm. 240hp is available from any run-of-the-mill manufacturer now, but 118hp per liter bears mentioning. It’s a relatively small engine that somehow manages to to churn out 240hp, and more importantly, 270-lb.ft. In the old V-6’s place is a sophisticated, remarkably quiet EcoBoost 2.0-liter GTDi four-cylinder. At that time, gas was relatively cheap and plentiful, but even as the economy improves, we’re paying $3.45 a gallon for fuel, and at least in high volume vehicles like the Escape, fuel economy is the brass ring manufacturers are striving for. The powerful, relatively low-tech Duratec V-6 is long gone. Second, it was the most horrendously uncomfortable vehicle I’d ever taken on a long trip.īoth of those observations are long past. I drove a really early model to the New York International Motorcycle Show at the Javits Center in late 2000, and I came away with two things that never really went away through two generations of the Escape: One, it offered a 205hp V-6 which seemed insanely powerful and thrashy at a time when Al Gore was suing to be president. Despite all the advances in the CR-V, though, the Ford Escape is going to be tough to catch up to.įord introduced the Escape model for the 2001 model year. It’s interesting that I had the last remaining 2014 Ford Escape Titanium this week, because I was making my way toward Massachusetts’ cranberry country to drive the all-new 2015 Honda CR-V, which is its lead competitor.
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