Yahoo Autos Ford's New Escape Leaves a Bitter Aftertaste
We're all familiar with the concept: Your favorite restaurant revamps the menu, removing everything delicious and replacing it all with more expensive, less satisfying fare. "Come on in. You'll love our new menu!" Turns out this model isn't exclusive to eateries. It's also something automakers have glommed onto in recent months, most notably Ford. The company has largely gutted its U.S. lineup of affordable and enjoyable sedans and hatchbacks and packed it with crossovers. New look, same great taste!
If only. Ford's Fiesta and Focus, which are still sold in other parts of the world, are fun to drive, practical, and affordable. But without them in the U.S. fleet, Ford is hoping that first-time buyers will instead step into an EcoSport or Escape.
Part of the soaring popularity of these car-based crossovers is that they're not entry-level vehicles. They have the high seating position and rugged essence that people are willing to pay for. Oftentimes, these crossovers offer more features and greater refinement than the sedans and hatchbacks from which they are spawned. When Ford removed the bottom rung of its product ladder, it turned the Escape, its second-bestselling vehicle behind the F-150, into one the cheapest products in its portfolio—and we're not talking about price.
Our test car's interior has a modern design and a high-mounted infotainment touchscreen, but hard, shiny, and chintzy-looking plastics are everywhere. The cloth seats are attractive, featuring a diamond pattern on the inserts that's echoed on the Escape's door panels. There were some standout build-quality issues with our preproduction Escape: We could see a gap between the door trim and the fabric headliner, parts of the center console had sharp edges left over from the molding process, and one of the front speakers simply didn't work. The infotainment system, while attractive and intuitive, didn't always respond promptly. We can only hope that production versions will be screwed together with more care.
In the Escape hierarchy, our SE is one step up from the base trim, S. A turbocharged 1.5-liter inline-three making 181 horsepower and 190 pound-feet of torque is standard. SE Sport and Titanium models come with a hybridized 2.5-liter inline-four good for 200 horsepower, while the top-spec 250-hp turbo 2.0-liter is available on all-wheel-drive SEL and Titanium versions.
It's the smallest engine in the lineup, but the 1.5 is plenty potent. The turbo three moves this 3494-pound ute to 60 mph in 7.7 seconds, putting it near the top of its class. That time makes the Ford quicker than base-engine versions of the Hyundai Tucson, Mazda CX-5, Nissan Rogue, Subaru Forester, Toyota RAV4, and Volkswagen Tiguan. A Honda CR-V with a turbocharged 1.5-liter four is quicker, but not by much. But no CR-V can come close to an Escape packing the turbocharged 2.0-liter four; it hits 60 mph in only 5.7 seconds.
The 1.5-liter pairs well with the eight-speed automatic. We caught the transmission hunting between second, third, and fourth gears while creeping through a traffic jam. Despite being tuned to stay in high gears as much as possible to boost fuel economy, there's sufficient torque and power here to give the Escape a leg up on around-town traffic. The power figures and low-effort acceleration are pretty impressive for a 1.5-liter three-pot. At high speeds, though, like when flooring it onto a freeway, the engine feels a few horses short of satisfying. And the 75 decibels measured at full throttle might not be high, but the quality of the sound isn't pleasing. We also uncovered a bad vibration below 1250 rpm, and when Ford's cylinder-deactivation technology took the engine from three cylinders to two, a low boom reverberated through the cabin and could be felt in the floorpan.
