Ford Edge
It's one thing for an automaker to develop a single good vehicle. After all, even a blind squirrel can score the occasional nut. But to gain a loyal customer base, automakers should string together a consistent cadence of winners. When CEO Alan Mulally joined Ford Motor Firm in 2006, he inherited a product lineup with only two true champions: the F-Series pickup plus the iconic Mustang. Over the next four years, Mulally and his team concentrated on obtaining the business leaner and meaner while improving top quality and streamlining its product offerings.
Ford has lots of product momentum of late, but quite a few in the outstanding new vehicles it's ushered to market have been built off an existing foundation. The new Taurus, Fusion and Mustang all feature the same basic architecture as their much less celebrated predecessors. The Edge is no different, and as such, it might be argued that the five-seat crossover may perhaps truly have been the most successful model out in the gate.
Ford sold 130,000 copies from the mid-size crossover during its 1st full yr on the market. Sure, that's 12,000 fewer sales compared to the Fusion's first full yr, but the key stat to consider is that the starting cost for an Edge was about $8,000 higher than a Fusion, which helps make it likely that Ford earns quite a bit more funds selling an Edge than when it moves a Fusion. That price disparity won't change for 2011, either, as the Edge now starts out at $27,220, with a Limited product like our tester commanding at least $34,220.
The first generation Edge (2006-10) impressed CUV buyers with its sharp-looking sheetmetal. It tends to make sense, then, that Ford put much less effort into redesigning an exterior that was already well-liked. The 2011 Edge receives a new, much more Fusion-like front fascia having a huge, bold grille plus a particularly attractive hood that rises over the engine and falls away from a sharp crease towards the fenders and grille. Sticking to Ford's comprehensive Refresh Playbook, designers also upgraded the Edge's lighting, utilizing modern-looking HID lamps up front and LED technology inside the taillights. Our top-end tester, which carries an MSRP of $39,995, also sported vertical LED light strips in place of conventional fog lamps within the front bumper.
Ford has performed a fine job making the Edge more handsome for 2011, but the heaviest lifting has been performed inside the cabin. Even though the dashboard in the first-generation Edge was arguably outclassed by a Tonka Truck, the 2011 Edge comes back with extremely tactile soft touch materials just about everywhere your fingers fall. The dash also loses the thick straight lines in the outgoing design in favor of an uninterrupted expanse that tops the entire instrument panel like a fitted hat. The leather seats in our Restricted tester were plush, bolstered just proper along with a pleasure in which to whilst away the miles. The steering wheel? Thick, covered in soft leather and smooth. And since a luxurious interior can't be had with out a quiet cabin, the new Edge is fitted with an acoustic windshield and thicker firewall to muffle the outside substantially much better than last year's product. What a difference a refresh makes.
The Edge is loads of things, but a seven-seater it's not (that is what the Flex and the new Explorer are for).<br> As a result, it has retained its two-row configuration with plenty of room for 5 adults plus 32.2 cubic feet of cargo space in back. Fold down the second-row seats that split 60/40 and capacity jumps to 68.9 cubic feet, or about 5 far more cubes than a Nissan Murano. Our tester made that additional cargo region extra accessible with a power liftgate and buttons to fold the second row seats with out leaning more than the bumper and acquiring one's pants dirty. And although the Edge is wide at 75.8 inches across to provide much more horizontal space to stuff large items by way of the hatch, there is a two- to three-inch lift-over that could make it a little tricky for some to get that cargo within the boot.
An attractive exterior can bring car buyers into the showroom, but a little of of 'surprise and delight' tech can be a incredibly effective tool to secure the sale. Ford seriously gets this, as technology has been a central component from the company's turnaround. The 2011 Edge is no various. Our tester included keyless entry with pushbutton begin, adaptive cruise control with an attention-grabbing collision warning technique, BLIS blind spot detection along with a rear-view camera. And that's not the half of it. The 2011 Edge is also offered with Ford's well-known SYNC process and the new MyFord Touch interface which includes a pair of 4.2-inch LCD screens on either side with the large analog speedometer and also a completely new take on how folks interact with the stereo, hands-free phone, navigation and climate controls.
Your author been dying to get his hands on a MyFord Touch-equipped Edge ever since it was introduced in the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. After a week living with the new contact tech, the story is mostly positive. The dual LCD screens within the gauge cluster are trick beyond compare, with crisp, bright graphics displaying all sorts of data. On the left is fuel economy and trip data and within the correct are choices for local weather handle, navigation, entertainment and telephone functions. A pair of four-way controllers with a 'Select' button on each and every side from the steering wheel are utilized to management each display. These controls are very intuitive to use, enabling the driver to focus less of his or her attention on the center console and much more around the road.
The eight-inch touch screen that dominates the middle with the dashboard is at the similar time aesthetically brilliant and uncomplicated to operate. Every of its 4 corners will take you to a different area from the MyFord Contact process: Phone (upper left), Navigation (upper suitable), Entertainment (lower left) and Local weather Manage (lower correct). You'll likely notice that each quadrant with the LCD is also color-coded, matching the colors for that very same functions to the dual 4.2-inch displays from the instrument cluster. Brilliantly played, FoMoCo. What in the event you still want a knob to basically adjust the volume around the stereo? When you opt for the Limited model, the upgraded Sony sound method includes a massive knob smack inside the middle in the middle stack. MyFord Contact also replaces conventional buttons to the center console with redundant contact sensitive controls for that stereo and local weather controls. Finally, you may also merely speak your commands using the SYNC system's voice recognition technique that's been upgraded to procedure over 10,000 commands.
We love the logical thinking that Ford has employed with this new interface, but the system isn't without flaws. Take the touch-sensitive controls adorning the center console. Even though the aforementioned volume knob is as huge as a baseball, the touch-sensitive "buttons" around it are the size of marbles. When turning the volume knob, our knuckles would generally graze the button that activates adjusting the stereo's settings on the main LCD. This accidental interaction swaps the primary LCD display from the navigation map we like to see while driving to controls for tinkering with the stereo. In order to get back every time, we had to touch the Navigation corner within the upper proper component of the display screen.
Then there's the touch-sensitive "button" below the significant LCD that activates hazard lights, which the base of our palm couldn't get enough of whenever we went to use the main display screen. Furthermore, the lowest touch-sensitive buttons that operate the dual-zone climate controls are partially blocked by the shift lever, which sits only a few inches from the interface when the Edge is parked. Even when the shift lever rests in 'D' there just is not adequate room to access this area. Perhaps over time we could get employed to making use of the voice commands to steer clear of those touch-sensitive controls altogether, but need to we have to?
Just as we were starting to feel wary of some of changes to this latest Edge, we engaged its pushbutton start and took off running. The newly upgraded 3.5-liter V6 motor now produces 285 horsepower and 253 pound-feet of torque thanks to the addition of twin-independent variable-cam timing. That is an increase of 20 hp and 3 lb-ft of torque more than final year's engine, and we could feel every extra pony inside stable. We estimate a jaunt to 60 miles per hour passes by in about 7.five seconds, though Motor Trend needed only 7.1 seconds to do the deed in a recent test.
This version of Ford's oft-used 3.5-liter V6 feels particularly silky as well, in portion since Ford has refined its six-speed automatic for smoother shifts. The greatest aspect of your Edge's power bump is that the upgraded powertrain also requires much less fuel. EPA fuel economic system numbers for the three.5-liter V6 inside the 2011 Edge are 19 miles per gallon inside the city and 27 mpg on the highway, a little but appreciated improvement around the 18/25 numbers of your less powerful outgoing model. We averaged 21.9 mpg in the course of our week of testing.
The last-generation Edge made do with only one accessible engine, but the new 2011 model provides 3 engine options. Beyond the base three.5-liter V6, the top-shelf Sport model gets a larger 3.7-liter V6 producing 305 hp and 280 lb-ft. The two V6s will also soon be joined by a third, much more efficient engine: a 2.0-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder boasting an estimated 230 hp and 15-percent far better fuel economic system than the 3.5-liter V6.
Dynamically, the new Edge even now feels heavy, and that's simply because it still is. The Refresh Playbook didn't consist of a chapter on dieting, because the Edge nonetheless weighs through 4,000 pounds. The three.5-liter V6 engine's extra energy, nonetheless, helps make more of those pounds melt away. Also, the Edge's wide stance, stiff chassis and firmly tuned suspension do an admirable job of managing that weight when diving into turns. The tautly sprung suspension favors smooth roads, because the reverberations may possibly be far more than some owners can stand when the road gets rough and pocked with imperfections.
Though the suspension may be categorized as sporty (for a crossover), the Edge's steering can not. Feedback from the wheel is mostly absent thanks to Ford's electronic energy steering process, which, in fairness, improves fuel efficiency compared to a conventional hydraulic technique that leaches off the engine. The brakes have also been improved for 2011. The last Edge suffered from mushy stoppers, which Ford engineers have fixed for the most component. Our tester's brakes carried quite a bit of bite after pushing by means of some initial softness in the beginning of the pedal's travel.
The Ford Edge has transformed from an attractive crossover with a passable cabin to an even better looking crossover with more energy, improved fuel economy and a really state-of-the-art interior experience. Usually, that's the type of report card an automaker hopes for when executing a full redesign in the end of a model's life cycle, and Ford has somehow managed to attain comparable results with just a mid-cycle refresh. If the brand continues on this pace, buyers will start expecting each and every new product wearing a Blue Oval badge to surprise and delight. Even though not the easiest play to pull off, it's the most effective method to construct a cheering section.
