Hi everyone.
I currently own a 2011 Ford Edge, and decided to make a switch. My mother-in-law's vehicle was getting rather old, so the Mrs and I decided to give her the Edge, and go for something new.
First - some thoughts over the 3 years of having this (currently at 51,000 on the ODO)
Likes -
Never had any major issues with the car - never had it in for any warranty work, unscheduled visits, etc. Which is always great for a vehicle. Other than my POS Mazdaspeed6, I've always felt I've been lucky in this aspect.
Car always seemed classy and looked good on the road.
Never had an issue with power - car accelerated well for what it was.
We did have an accident - where my wife hit a 5-pt buck. While the deer did over 12K in damage to the car, both my daughter and wife were safe.
Very spacious on the inside – maybe even too much. Car feels bigger than it really is.
One thing that I'm really going to miss is that keypad on the door...it's really a great feature when you want to lock the keys in the car (when I go running or biking).
Dislikes -
Top of this list is the Ford Sync system. It was horrid at best.
Navigation was awful to use, whether by POI, or address entry. It was so bad, we found it better to enter this into MapQuest and download it through the phone.
GPS from the maps would take 20 minutes or longer to put the car on the road
Voice commands were bad – could not use it at all to enter an address. I’d rather have a root-canal (which I’ve never had) with no Novocain.
Driver display on right side always defaulted to a generic setting when turning the car on. Not a huge deal – but why doesn’t it come back where I left it?
Buttons from the radio would rarely show on the main screen.
Phones were slow to connect to the car (sometimes 10-15 minutes).
The latest update from Ford helped Sync...but it was still bad. I’m really glad that Ford stopped promoting this in their ads – as it’s clearly the weakest part of this cars brains.
Advertised gas mileage. I realize I live in a hilly city – but I never even came close to the low end of this – with a ton of highway driving. Typically, we’d get 18.5MPG with 70% highway driving. I hit 20MPG once, with almost all highway driving. I’m thinking this is another one of Ford’s lies.
Disconnected feeling while driving. While I know many of the cars I have are sporty – there’s a disconnect between the wheel and what the car does. Almost a numbness feeling when turning. It’s hard to explain – but if you drive some other cars, you’d see what I’m talking about.
The ‘piano black’ center console. Looks great when clean – but shows every little speck of dust.
Front seats felt like a bench seat from an 80’s pickup. There’s no lateral support what so ever.
Two setting seat heaters. (why only 2, when the Focus has 5). Of the two settings, you have ‘burn your arse’ HI and ‘can’t even feel it’ LO. They really need to fix this.
Plastic wheels - really, in a 45K vehicle?
So, on to the new
With our daughter turning 16 – it looks like she will be getting our MINI. So what was our winter only drive with the Ford Edge, will now be a full time vehicle. We were looking for something that was similar in size – and since my wife drives 70 miles round trip to work, could easily get an additional 6 to 10 MPG more. Enter the Jeep Grand Cherokee Diesel.
Currently, we have 1200 miles on this, and I can fully state that we're already hitting above the claimed mileage. In combined driving, we're averaging 25.5MPG and constantly hit over 29MPG on the highway. I'm hoping that this will only get better as the engine breaks in. Where we were filling the Edge twice a week - we can now go a week and a half between fillups. Sure - the cost is higher to fill up, but time is money too.
Backseat is smaller than what the Edge has, but cargo space is higher. Basically, bad for the kids, great for the dog.
Time will tell if this ends up being a good vehicle, we got a free 'lifetime powertrain warranty' with this - so we're hoping to go the long haul...we'll just need to see if I'm still in love after the honeymoon period is over
I still plan to lurk around here - as I'm sure I'll be looking up items for my mother-in law. Appreciate everyone's time over the past 3 years.
Joey
