Others entered the car-based SUV earlier, but Ford made the biggest splash when it introduced the Escape in the 2001 model year. The Escape seemed to have it all: the appearance of a real SUV, a V6 to give it the grunt of a real SUV, a spacious interior, and relatively car-like ride and handling. It won nearly every comparison test it entered.

I’ve driven a couple of Escapes over the past two years. (To read my initial review click here. I’ve liked a lot about them, even though I’m not really an SUV person. Yet I didn’t care for some of the interior materials and for the noise level on the highway. For 2003 Ford has upgraded the interior and added a new Limited model at the top of the range. To see if the Escape now qualified as a luxurious vehicle, I took one for a test drive.

Ford Escape Reliability

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Styling

Gold is generally a color I HATE on a car. However, Ford has added a color called ‘gold ash’ that looked amazingly good on the Limited I drove. When I first saw this color, I wasn’t sure what to call it. I had to look on the window sticker to learn that it’s supposedly a shade of gold. It looks more like a silver with faint pearl overtones, and maybe a touch of light green as well. Especially on the Limited, with its body color cladding (other Escapes continue to have gray cladding) the sophistication of this color is eye-catching. If you’ve read many of my other reviews, you’ll know I hardly ever mention paint colors. That I’m mentioning it at all is a sign of how distinctive it is.

Aside from the body-color cladding and new colors, the Escape’s exterior appears unchanged. The Escape is styled to look like a small Explorer. The overall look is sporty with a some amounts of both cuteness (the roundness of most lines) and aggressiveness (the front bumper) tossed in. With its monotone scheme, the Limited loses a bit of aggressiveness but gains sophistication. In a way this is more honest, as the Escape isn’t really designed for the serious off-road action suggested by the other models’ gray cladding. I suppose it’s one for the ladies and whoever else gets turned on by Yukon Denalis. (To read my reviews of related vehicles mentioned in this review click on the hyperlinks.)

The interior is conventional Ford SUV in appearance, with the exception of the white-faced gauges. Since these were introduced by Nissan with the 1989 Maxima SE, they've been springing up inside many cars that aspire to be thought of as sporty. If you like them, chalk up one point for the Ford. (The Mazda Tribute, the Escape’s twin in all but styling details, has conventional dark gauge faces.)

One change for the better for 2003 is that the large black panel surrounding the stereo and HVAC controls in the center of the dash is now that trendy metallic finish rather than matte black. This is a major improvement, as the black panel cheapened the whole interior, but this isn’t the best application of the stuff. (It’s also used on the power window panels on the doors.) I saw the 2003 Escape in two interiors, the two-tone tan in the Limited I drove and the two-tone gray of an XLT. (Two-tone leather is new for 2003.) With the tan the metallic plastic doesn’t look quite right, and with the gray it blends in a bit much. The Limited alone is available in a third interior color, black. I suspect that with the black the metallic trim comes into its own, as it has in other cars with this contrasting combination.

The metallic trim does move the interior a bit upscale, but it’s still far from the most stylish and richest in appearance. For example, the Jeep Liberty and Subaru Forester both have more attractive interiors. Compared to those, the Escape interior is merely acceptable rather than noteworthy.

The Limited supposedly includes a premium grade of leather. I suppose it did seem a bit less like vinyl than the stuff in the XLT I sat in, but it’s still clearly not the same stuff used by Jag and Lexus. The two-tone looks nice with the tan. The gray even with two-tone is a bit blah.

Accommodations

This interior is extremely well packaged and very functional. There is plenty of room in both the front and rear seats, surprising given the length of the vehicle. The front seat is very high even in its lowest setting (a power driver’s seat is standard on the top trim levels). The view out is exceptionally clear in all directions. Looking forward, the dash is well below the driver’s line of sight, and the windshield header well above it. The windshield is large. All in all, a match for the driving position in any SUV.

Sadly, the front seats are awful. The cushion is very small, ending only a bit more than halfway down my not very long thigh. Worse, the panel on the leading edge of the leather seats is heavily stuffed, producing a bulge I found mildly uncomfortable the entire time I drove the vehicle. I sat in a cloth 2002, and it was not nearly as bad; so either the seats have been redesigned for 2003 or the leather is more heavily stuffed than the cloth. All Escapes I’ve driven before have been cloth, which might be why I’ve never noticed this problem before. I’ve often felt that seats in Fords were too small even for my not very large self. Why is this? Well, I guess short people are probably very happy with them.

The XLT I sat in had the optional step bars along the sides. I felt that these got in the way more than they helped. A standard grab handle on each windshield pillar eases entry and exit.

Things are happier in the rear seat. Head and leg room are both plentiful. Best of all, the rear seat cushion is high off the floor, providing excellent thigh support. I hate rear seats that are too low, so your legs flop to the side. The Jeep Liberty and Honda CR-V also have nice high rear seats, but most SUVs do not. The Ford Explorer, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Chevrolet TrailBlazer are all inferior to the smaller, cheaper Escape in this area. Only the total lack of contour—the rear seat is about as flat as the proverbial park bench—keeps the rear seat from being an excellent place to spend some serious time.

There's plenty of room for stuff, too. There is a huge center storage compartment between the front seats. The rear seat folds flat in two sections to create a nice square cargo area. There is less cargo room than in mid-size SUVs, but most people will find it more than adequate, seat up or folded.

I did not care for the complexity of the rear seat. You must remove the headrest, then tilt the cushion forward, then fold the seatback down. The mechanism that allows the seat cushion to pivot felt a bit flimsy to me. If the owner is careful, though, it should hold up. It would be nice if fewer steps were involved, though. Putting up the seat is a particular hassle, as you must hold all of the seatbelt buckles in one hand while shoving the cushion back into place with the other. There’s got to be a better way.

On the Road

Now we come to the important part: how does it drive? The engine comes from Ford. It is the same 3.0-liter DOHC V6 found in the Taurus. At 200 horsepower, it is far more powerful than the engines of Japanese competitors. Only the Jeep Liberty has a more powerful engine, and that engine has to motivate substantially more mass. From a stop, it launches quite strongly, giving the impression of more than enough power. It may launch a bit too strongly for those who like to get under way smoothly. As speed increases, the not inconsiderable weight and frontal area of the vehicle begin to take their toll. This may be a compact SUV, but it still weighs about 3500 lbs. and stands about 68 inches tall. So by the time the Escape passes 40 MPH the engine begins to feel a bit winded (though less so than the fours in many competitors or the six in the Liberty).

The noise the engine makes does not help. Given any throttle at all, the Ford V6 makes itself easily heard. When pushed, it makes a lot of noise, and this noise is not particularly good noise. Some engines when they make noise invigorate the driver, they say "this is performance machinery" and beg to be pushed harder. The Ford engine's noise says, "I'm strained, please ease off." On second thought, many American SUV engines sound this way, so maybe they were just looking to replicate the sensations of the Escape’s big brothers.

While we're on the subject of noise, I should say that noise is probably the #1 weakness of the Escape. There is simply too much of it. I've already talked enough about the engine. Then there are the tires, which make more noise on some surfaces than are others, but are never silent. Some wind noise is also present at even moderate speeds. At first I felt that Ford might have partially fixed the noise issue, but then I took the new Escape on the highway and there it was. Add all of this noise up, and the Escape says "truck." As in the past, if you want a luxurious vehicle, then this is not your SUV.

This is a shame, because the Escape rides fairly well for an SUV. Because it has a unibody, the body-on-frame shudders present in many conventional SUVs are absent here. The all-independent suspension, another departure from conventional SUVs, soaks up most bumps quite well. It never rocked side to side or front to back, characteristics present in many other SUVs. Poorly maintained road surfaces mildly disturbed the ride, though the resulting noise was much worse than any effect on the ride itself.

Mazda engineered the Escape on a car chassis, with the priority being on-road driveability. So it should come as not surprise that handling is also respectable--for an SUV. Though the Escape is a few inches higher than the competition, the Jeep Liberty being the sole notable exception, it leans less than I expected. More precisely, it leans noticeably at initial turn-in, but then firms up. Once I got used to this behavior, I felt very confident in the Escape’s abilities. The chassis has a nice balanced feel to it, largely devoid of the plow all too common with front-wheel-drive platforms. Though hardly BMW-like, the steering has a decent amount of heft and precision to it. It even provides some feedback. However, I never quite felt connected to the vehicle the way I like to be. In some subtle, hard to describe way the Escape feels very much like a scaled down Explorer much more than it does a car. For example, it has more of that genuine SUV feel than a Saturn VUE or Honda CR-V. No doubt this is by design. The tires aren’t meant for hard cornering, and squeal fairly easily. Luckily, they don’t squeal loudly. They just want you to know at what point to lay off.

I cannot fully evaluate the four-wheel-drive, since I did not take the Escape off-road or drive it in nasty weather. The system has two settings, Auto and On. In auto, the vehicle sends power through the front wheels until they start slipping. Then it automatically directs power to the rear wheels. This type of system, similar to that in the Honda CR-V, is not intended for serious off-roading, but for driving on wet or snowy roads. To give it a bit of a test back in 2001, I took the vehicle onto a wide gravel shoulder and gave the accelerator, brakes, and steering a work-out. In this minor test the Escape remained very easy to handle. I could not detect any slippage in the front wheels, nor could I tell when power was transferred. The operation of the system was transparent, as it should be. For extended operation on slippery surfaces, just turn the switch to "On." There is no low range, so I wouldn't expect it to do well as a serious off-roader. For serious off-road use,look at the more trucky Liberty.

Last Words

Overall, the Escape is a nice package as long as you don't desire a serene ride. Whether it is a better choice than a Liberty or VUE comes down to priorities. Namely, how trucky do you want your SUV to feel and look? Many people have aesthetic issues with the Liberty and VUE, so the Escape becomes the obvious choice. Want a more car-like feel? Then the VUE is probably the best. Want the most distinctive styling or true off-road ability? Then it’s the Liberty.

To learn more about my reliability research and sign up to participate in it, or to perform thorough up-to-date new car price comparisons, visit www.truedelta.com. A link to this website and alphabetized links to my other vehicle reviews can be found on my profile page.

Amount Paid (US$): 28,410
Model and Options: Limited with sunroof and tow package