| Marketplace | Services | Contact Us | Community | Arts & Entertainment | Local Guides | |||
|
|||
|
On Wheels by Brooks Peterson Archives | Arts & Entertainment | Audio/Video | Business | Classifieds | Columns | Food | Forums | Health & Fitness | News | Obits | Opinions | People | Politics | Science/Technology | Search | Sports | Subscribe | Travel | Weather Published by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. CLICK FOR NEWSPAPER DELIVERY Saturday, October 6, 2001 SUV with clout added to lineupFord Escape XLS offers an engaging mix of agile handling and performance
Hello? OK, here it is: After endless observation and meditation, and after driving a couple of zillion tall, tippy, stiff-legged, gnarly looking utes, I have concluded that many if not most SUV purchasers buy these vehicles because they want a station wagon that isn't a station wagon. Get it?
For reasons I still can't quite sort out, American station wagons, with their acres of woodgrain-vinyl side cladding, their glittering chrome, their cushy ride and their acres of interior space began to fall from grace in, oh, say, the mid to late '80s. In part, no doubt, the advent of the minivan was a factor: With their more efficient layout and their car-like demeanor, minivans captured millions who otherwise might have joined the wagon train. But I submit there was more to it than cold calculation. When it comes to Americans and cars, no decision is ever 100 percent rational. I think many of us came to associate station wagons with the stultifying ethos of the 1950s: While wagons were fine for Wally and the Beaver, they were (we sneered) woefully short on cachet and charisma.
So . . . when the sport ute trundled down the runway, it had a made-to-order constituency: SUVs were (are) roomy but not clunky, substantial but not stolid. And if their handling was a little squirrelly, and if a lot of them inhaled petrol at an alarming rate . . . well, tough. After all, you do get that high-riding above-the-fray stance: How you gonna put a price tag on that? With me so far? OK: Time passes, and we witness the SUV cosmos developing all sorts of permutations. And along with the new permutations come new paradigms. (What's a paradigm, you ask? Last time I checked, it was 20 cents.) More and less
Among the emerging elements, I submit, is the consumer who is looking for a sport ute that is at once more and less than a sport ute. Enter, among others, the Ford Escape, the latest in Dearborn's steadily growing family of E-vehicles: the class-ruling Explorer, the brawny Expedition, and the gargantuan Excursion. The Escape (which, it should be noted, shares its platform with the Mazda Tribute), neatly fills what was a gaping hole in FoMoCo's SUV lineup: a contender to duke it out with such ute-country leprechauns as the Toyota RAV4, the Honda CR-V, the Suzuki Vitara (and Grand Vitara). The Ford guys arrived late at this dance, but, boy, did they ever arrive well-armed. You find yourself wondering how they ever made it through the security guards at the door. So: How does this More and Less thing work? To begin with, it demands a certain amount of attention to the menu of options available for the Escape. 201 horsepower
First thing - and this is virtually mandatory - you make sure you tick the box on the order form that gets you the 201-horsepower, 3-liter Duratec V-6. (The standard 127-hp 2-liter four would, I suppose, be adequate - but remember, we're talking more. Not ridiculously more, not wretched-excess more, but significantly, perceptibly more.) I would make so bold as to say this in itself makes all the difference. No doubt there are SUVs out there with more powerful engines, but most of them are toting a heck of a lot more bulk. Even with the mandatory automatic transmission, the V-6-equipped Escape peels out from a stop like . . . well, not like a shot from a gun, but with a whole lot more authority - and joie de vivre - than any other ute I can think of at the moment. I mean, this thing can fly. And while it's no sports car - aggressive behavior in the curves generates emphatic sensory input (Wadda you, nuts? Slow down!) - its relative lightness lends a certain agility that you just don't expect to encounter in utes, cute or otherwise. All-wheel-drive Our tester came with the optional Control Trac II automatic all-wheel-drive. This is a no-stress, no-strain arrangement that decides for you whether power should be going to the front wheels (in normal driving) or to all four. If the need arises, you can order up AWD on command. As in most junior utes, there's no low-range 4WD; but it's unlikely the Escape will be doing the kind of bog-slogging in which that would be needed. Less can be more
OK: Now, let's proceed to the less component of our paradigm. (Remember?) Granted, the Escape doesn't feature the kind of bank-vault solidity you'd encounter in, say, a Toyota Land Cruiser, but the payoff is the aforementioned liveliness and user-friendly handling. Another component of the "less" equation is one that may not appeal to many of you, but for me it was downright refreshing: less glitz. In some respects reminiscent of Nissan's admirable (but beefier) Xterra, this is a back-to-basics sort of ride, at least in the XLS tester we drove. Comfortable seats, but nothing splashy; rugged-looking carpeting; plasvinyl door panels - nobody's going to mistake this vehicle for an oriental potentate's pleasure barge. Henry David Thoreau would approve (though he might opt for the four). Bothersome feature Now, a word or two from our Nobody's Perfect Department: While the automatic transmission does its work efficiently and unobtrusively, why the heck does it work through a steering-column-mounted shifter? The arrangement is bothersome and counter-intuitive. Put the durn thing down on the console between the front seats where it belongs. Also: While there is, to my mind, no such thing as an aerodynamic, wind-cheating SUV, this one does seem to admit a little more wind noise than the norm. But that's about it for gripes: With its engaging mix of performance, agile handling, spacious (and readily re-configurable) interior, and, for cryin' out loud, even decent gas mileage, this is a ute destined to score some loot. 
© 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved. |
 |
 |
|
