Click To View Larger Image

Story by Dubspeed Driven Associate Editor, Wes Grueninger
Photos by Ford Motor Company

“Crossover” is the tofu adjective of the small SUV world – able to be molded and shaped into whatever definition is needed. The Honda CR-V is a crossover according to most magazines, but the minivan-based Pilot is not. Yet the Pilot is the same size as Mitsubishi’s Endeavor, which is referred to as a crossover. The Mitsu is nearly as long as the Cadillac SRX, which is a crossover as well, but is only five inches shorter when standing cheek-to-cheek with Subaru’s Forester, which is generally regarded as a tall station wagon.

American sensibilities lying where they do, maybe it’s best to classify trucklets by the number of cupholders available. Using that criterion, Ford’s Edge, its newest entry in the mushrooming crossover market, definitely has the chops to compete, racking up eight total drink cubbies when its full strategic arsenal of beverage retention devices is deployed.

Whatever metric Ford chose to use, its design benchmarks for the class were the five-seat Toyota Highlander and Nissan Murano. Since the design first started coalescing in Dearborn’s underground bunkers, other blips have appeared on the radar, including the turbocharged Mazda CX-7, the Acura RDX, and a V6-powered road-rocket, the Toyota RAV4.

Click To View Larger Image

Edge wades into the alphabet soup in two guises: full-time all-wheel-drive, which can react quickly enough to redirect power from any one corner of the vehicle to any other in less time that it takes one wheel to go through an eighth of a revolution; and front-wheel-drive only. Both models come with the standard complement of side, curtain, and frontal airbags, as well as an AdvanceTrac traction control system and Roll Stability Control to keep the 4,200-pound Ford from getting tipsy.

Click To View Larger Image

What you first notice about getting into the Edge is that it’s remarkably easy – the seat is the perfect height to sidle your hips onto the cushion without having to step up or down. It’s once you’ve seated yourself in the Edge that the monkey-paws – the good tempered by the bad – start to appear. The center stack is ensconced in a single piece of ribbed aluminum that looks fantastic, but it’s bracketed by a flimsy, cheap piece of molded silver plastic. The armrest has enough reconfigurable storage bins to allow two-tier storage, and is deep enough to stash a small laptop computer, but the dividers are awkward to use and don’t often fit in where they should. There is an 1/8” line-in jack built into the console to allow an iPod or its ilk to play through the radio, and there are even small grooves cut into the walls of the console to keep the cords tucked nicely in place, but control over playlists and song tracks still has to be done by fumbling around with the player itself. The steering wheel, a beefy cake-doughnut of a tiller, wrapped in soft leather hides, is a pleasure to hold, but the rest of the instrument panel and the doors are covered in a hard, unforgiving matte-finish plastic which looks supple – but isn’t.

Click To View Larger Image

Our testers were of the SEL trim level, which included high-quality leather seating with contrasting stitching – a nice touch more manufacturers should adopt. The feature that deserves the most lauding, however, is the available Vista Roof. Essentially two glass panels that span from the windshield to the hatch, the $1395 option opens up the otherwise chuckle-free cabin of the Edge, and sports a UV coating so that passengers aren’t marinating in their own sweat on sunny days. The front panel, which extends halfway into the back seat, motors fully open, while the rear remains fixed. Wind noise and buffeting are virtually nonexistent with the Vista Roof, and when you’re done looning about with the sun and stars, a power sunshade extends to restore the interior’s somber gravitas.

Click To View Larger Image

The same criticism cannot be leveled against the exterior, which is refreshingly crisp and modern and unmistakably Ford. The windshield is canted backwards rakishly and the D-pillars are swept forwards gently to produce a handsome, athletic profile. The upright three-bar chrome grille – Ford assures us that there will be no monochrome option – lends visual weight to the front of the Edge, and there are numerous subtle creases and character lines which let the sun play off our test car’s metallic copper paint. Hunkered down on its optional eighteen-inch wheels, the Edge is imbued with a sense of solidity and heft, while its bulging wheelhouses, high beltline and pert overhangs make the vehicle seem smaller than it really is.

Click To View Larger Image

What they can’t do, though, is mask that feeling once you’ve started to drive. Edge feels big, and while never unmanageable or bulky, no amount of clever bodywork can hide the size. The ride itself is terrific – firm but not harsh, no pitching or rolling, no overwrought bouncing or wavering from the sidewalls of the tires flexing, and no hewing through corners with its Contis screaming in protest. That’s because when trying to hustle through a curve with anything approaching va-va-voom, our Edge liked to plow instead nose-first. To be fair, auto journalists drive like a cadre of ragged hooligans, and Ford’s standard stability control system does an excellent job of pulling any young Mario’s bacon out of the fryer. Ford expects the Edge to be a big seller among thirty-something Gen-Xers and the first of the sixty-something Boomers, so it’s doubtful that either demographic would try to run a qualifying lap in a crossover utility vehicle. Its steering is nicely weighted and has a positive on-center feel; on the highway, Edge clamps onto straight-ahead and sticks with it tenaciously, even when buffeted around by the wakes of tractor-trailers and the perilous winds blowing in off San Francisco Bay.

Click To View Larger Image

When it hits showrooms next month, the Edge will be offered only with Ford’s new 3.5-liter V6. This latest iteration of Ford’s venerable Duratec family of engines is almost entirely new, and will be finding its way into other Ford cars and trucks, including the Freestyle and Five Hundred. The clean-sheet design is mated to an all-new six-speed transmission that has been co-developed with, of all companies, General Motors, and therefore found in another “American Renaissance” vehicle, the Saturn Aura.

Click To View Larger Image

Under wide-open throttle, the new Ford 6F50 transmission is like most modern automatics in that it is lazy to downshift, and there is no manumatic mode to summon the gears at will. The console-mounted shifter has a button to cancel overdrive, and it also engages a grade-logic system to hold out downshifts when driving through the hills, but besides that there are naught other than “Drive” and “Low” to be had – a sin with the plethora of ratios available in the new gearbox.

Upshifts, on the other hand, are serenely quick and drama-free, letting the engine rev to a full 6700 RPM before clicking up to another gear. Winding it out is accompanied by a muted wail instead of an open-pipe symphony as the quad-cam, 24-valve, variable-intake engine bleats its heart out. The mill’s 265 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque sound impressive on paper, but in practice even the most imprudent throttle-stabbing is hampered by the two tons of truck that’s being dragged around. Despite the Edge’s heft, Ford says that buyers should expect to see 18 miles per gallon in the city and mid twenties on the highway, all while using regular unleaded fuel.

Click To View Larger Image

Ford hopes that the Edge will be known as the quintessential “crossover utility vehicle” – much the way that the Mustang defined the pony car forty years ago and the Explorer was vaulted to stardom as the de rigueur family SUV in 1991. With car buyers looking for more space and utility without the safety and mileage penalties of traditional SUVs, and existing SUV owners looking to downsize to something more efficient, the nebulous CUV segment has become the fastest-growing market in the United States. With sales expected to surpass those of SUVs before the year is out, the Edge is Ford’s gamble to get in on the action while the market is still growing. Despite all the new features and the smiling enthusiasm running through Dearborn over the model, one burning question remains: What compelling reason is there to buy a Ford Edge over its competition? It’s a perfectly average vehicle, neither excelling nor falling down in any particular area. Ford has not dropped the ball with Edge, but in a market filled with intense competition, its middle-of-the-road development means that it’s vanilla.

And yet it should be pointed out that a majority of buyers want vanilla. Couple that with a base price starting under $26,000, and that’s a lot of ice cream for your dollar, indeed.