sim

The Geico version of the extended warranty is the mechanical breakdown coverage - its around $35-40/6 month period. It covers much the same as the bumper to bumper for 7 years/100k and over that 7 years (assuming you pay all the way through) it costs a max $560 at the highest rate. Hoping i wont need it, but you never know - i wanted to get an extended warranty of some sort, being its a US car and also that its fresh off the design board. Even with the extra QA/QC i heard about, i still dont want to be the guinea-pig without some extra coverage.

What is this X-plan i keep hearing about? Is it trading in an old Ford vehicle (i.e. exchange) or something to do with working for Ford or something else altogether? I also heard about a Z plan - what is that?

Still nothing new on the dashboard glare, but there is a reflection off the chrome on the shifter when the sun is high in the sky around noon time that sometimes reflects up under my sunglasses. Another issue is that the window slopes enough that i have to use the sun visor to block it out when the sun is low in the sky - a problem i dont normally have as my head is usually on the ceiling in most cars. With the seat raise/lower option i can actually see stop lights when at the line rather than ducking under the roof to see them in most cars - so one advantage to one slight disadvantage. Not huge by any means.

Of course you dont have to stomp to get a downshift at 45mph, a good toe poke will get a downshift of only a gear or two and off you go. As for the engine speed and gear shifting, i have found it great so far. The revs in top gear on any road from 40mph upwards are rediculously low - much lower than any other cars i have driven. Whilst i have only owned 5 cars in the last 12 years, i have probably driven about 100 different models from loaners to rental, work vehicles to friends cars - not to mention riding as a passenger too, none of them does 70 at 1900rpm. My transmission shifts to 6th gear at about 41-42 mph on moderate acceleration, on foot to the floor it hangs in gears as suggested above, but i am not looking to make tire tracks every time i pull away! Under modest acceleration the car goes 0-10 in 1st, 10-20 in 2nd, 20-30 in 3rd, will hold 4th up into the 40's before shifting down the final two in the high 30's and low 40's, under more acceleration it will pick up 5th in the mid-40's and kick into 6th in the 50's. All in all it drops into gears around the same time as my older 4 w/ overdrive automatics did when going up the first 4 gears and the 6th is so high that it really is almost ticking over up until 60mph or higher to highway speeds. This may also be the reason i dont get into accidents and get better than EPA mileage - i dont drive it like a viper. If there is an update i would prefer to get it to be up with the technology, but really i dont try to haul once i get to 45mph, it picks up quickly enough in 4th or 5th with a small toe poke that i am very content to overtake most things on the road.

While i didnt buy into the extended warranty for an extra couple of grand, i have been pondering over the "ESP Maintenance Plans" that Ford offer. According to the dealer, the price is supposed to be state governed rather than jacked up by the dealer. I still have a little research to do on this, but i thought i would start that here and move on to the rest of the web as needed. We are looking to keep this car beyond the finance period, probably at least the 6 years that is the maximum term of these plans. We also generally drive quite a few miles, my previous car averaged 20k/yr, however now there are 2 cars to pool with at the house since we got married that might drop a little for both of our cars. However just to be sure i was thinking of going for the 90-100k distance options. I have the towing package, intend to use that capability and will drive the Edge somewhat offroad - at least down dusty trails, as well as having the Floridian heat on it most of the year, so i am thinking of going with the optional maintance schedule of oil changes every 5k miles. Personally i also feel happier at 5k than 7.5k partly as i have always changed my oil on older cars around 4-6k miles and also this is a newer car so hopefully if there are problems they can be picked up by more frequent inspections. I wouldnt even consider doing 3k changes as i think that is way too often. So realistically i believe that the $1600 or so that they are charging in Florida for the scheduled maintenance with "premium" package is probably not a bad deal, particularly if i can pay it in installments interest free over x months as suggested in the brochure and also given the rates of doing most of those services at a generic (non-dealer) car shop like the sort i used to use for the Sentra. I estimate the averages for various services covered in the plan as: Oil change ~$15-20, usually plus disposal (maybe another $3) Tire rotation - often included with a $20 oil change, but otherwise about $10-20 stand-alone Inspection - often courtesy with oil changes, sometimes complete, sometimes not! For a stand-alone check its usually another $20 Coolant change/flush ~$50-60 Transmission change/flush ~$60-70 Cabin, engine and micro-filters ~$20-40 for parts and a huge amount for installation, always did it myself PCV valve ~$20-40 again, not sure, its been a while since i last had that changed to recall When calculated out over the frequency of the oil changes and with the other premium/wear items included (assuming that is kosher too - see below) it pans out to about the same amount either way and of course given that those rates above are generic, not the slightly inflated dealership prices (assuming the service is better at the dealership too) than you come out ahead going with the plan. Now also available is the premium plan which is supposed to "cover the following items if they fail due to normal wear" - spark plugs, shock absorbers, clutch disc, engine belts and hoses, brake pads and linings, as well as wiper blades. Now that all sounds great, but i am not too happy about the wording of "if they fail", does that mean they have to actually break to be replaced, or in the case of brakes, wear down to a certain thickness? The same could be said for all of those parts that wear, i would prefer not to be stuck somewhere with broken parts when they could have been replaced after substantial wear, but before catastrophic failure. Wipers in Florida last about a year, could cost anywhere from $20-50 a pair on average. According to the optional plan the spark plugs are scheduled to be replaced after 60k miles, however i dont know if that would be worn enough or at the point of failure to be covered. The list goes on. So does anyone have any idea on these things? I have sent a list of questions back to the dealer regarding this and hope to hear from them soon, but i thought i would ask here in the meantime. Given the info in the booklet i think we are going to go for it, unless we hear otherwise that the plan isnt worth the paper its written on due to legalese that pretty much precludes a bunch of repairs.

They would have to improve the highlander a LOT to bring it up to the level of the Edge. After driving one i almost had whiplash from the transmissions jerky shifting. The RAV4 had a much better engine and transmission much like what they are intending to put in the highlander, even so it was still a little quirky in other areas too which is why we didnt buy one. As for price, you can get good deals out there, i got $1500 off MSRP in the offered price and the college discount through my wife's recent graduation from medical school. The trade-in covered all taxes, fees and knocked a little more off the price to get a fairly low finance amount - and we got that at 1.9% over 48 months, so quite happy there too. I think we could have gotten another $500 off using the numbers in the consumer reports figures, but i thought that was a pretty sweet deals as they gave us more for the trade than the car was worth - i assure you on that one being the driver of that car! $2k later in the year may be possible, but the price is still very good given the fairly small supply compared to the demand. I am not sure how many they are producing per month, but if they are selling 8k units or so according to the reports that is pretty good and i can tell by the few on the lots around here that they arent staying long once they roll off the truck. Economic theory suggests the price should be around MSRP due to this supply/demand dynamic, but they are sometimes going for less.

That's about what i have been seeing so far as well. Although my in-towns are a little higher... towards the 18-20 mark, but close enough. We dont have the sunroof though! Much above 70mph and the numbers start heading into the lower 20's.

The starter reading of 3 miles, is probably moving around the holding area at the plant, idling and getting the car onto trucks and railcars as needed. The MPG will be lower the more you idle, if you sit at a stop light, you'll see it slowly trickle down 0.1 MPG at a time. As for the F150's, i use a variety of those as well as sport-trac's and explorers. Even on the best driving i would say 16-18 on the highway and quite a bit less in the city, nearer 14 probably from a few thousand miles in those vehicles.

No sidesteps/bars yet, we asked and nothing out there so far. However we were told that people who create the aftermarket equipment such as the steps might well have bought an Edge to start taking it apart to fit in their products. Nothing from Ford for sure yet though. As for the math, really its just the difference of 1" in diameter in the rim and a slightly different tire - which is just under 1" in height on the vehicle overall. However there could be just as much spring contraction based upon the weight of and in the vehicle and its distribution. Looking at the rims and tires, assuming no compression of the wheel walls the 18" rim is 1" larger than the 17", the tires are P235/65 R17 and P245/60 R18, which when added to the rim would result in 0.77" difference in overall diameter of the rim and tire due to the lower aspect ratio and wider width of the 18" tire. When you calculate out the circumference of each of the tires the 17" gives 6.03', the 18" is equal to 6.23', difference of 0.2' (~2.5"). When you compare these, the difference is about 3% which would translate to about a 3% increase in speed and distance given the same RPM and gearing ratio turning the wheels at the same number of rotations per minute. To go 1 mile, the 17" rotates 875.6 times, the 18" 847.5 times, about 28 revolutions difference per mile. That may or may not really add up over time. So as suggested above, having the smaller rims, but set up for the larger rims would indeed run your mileage up, i dont know if 3% would make a huge difference between these two or not in reality - are they even calibrated that well to start off with? That 36k miles reading might really only be 34,020 miles, the 60k warranty would expire at 58,200 miles. Cops are "supposed" to give you x% over the limit for faulty speedometers according to some folks, so i have my doubts as to how accurate those readings are anyway. I was wondering this the other day, but i assume when they manufacture the Edge that they set the speedometer and odometer for the rim size that was on the original order option form - i.e. 17 or 18" and there is a slight difference in these.

No complaints so far.

This may be a little late as a welcome, given i have posted on here since last week, but i thought i would wait a little to get the feel for my new Edge before posting about it. My previous car was a Sentra, cheap, basic, good mileage, but after 106k in 5.5 years it was breaking down in all kinds of ways - window jams which we fixed, new radiator, new tires every 30k and alignments nearly annually, sensors being replaced, transmission on the way out, as well as the standard maintenance around this mileage. This was my first Japanese car and i can only say that my wife and i are never buying another Nissan. We do also have a Honda Accord, which we both enjoy though, so might continue with that until we have issues as well. My history is very much Ford based, probably because my grandfather used to build them in the UK and it just continued from there. My first car was a Fiesta, then two Escorts followed that before i moved to this side of the Atlantic and bought the Sentra. Quite happy to be back in the Ford. Other than the Accord and now the Edge, the best car i had was my 95 Escort. So we did the ueual, searched around, test drove nearly a dozen cars from Honda (CRV and Ridgeline), Toyota (Tacoma, RAV4, Highlander), VW (Passat Wagon), Subaru (Forester and Outback) as well as Ford (Escape, Freestyle and Edge). We got in touch with the 4 main dealers around here and tried to play them off each other, however it was tough to get one spec'd out quite as we wanted that was in inventory. The dealer we bought from finally found one in Atlanta, in fact 3 that were almost identical to what we wanted and arranged for shipping on a transporter that a friend of his operates. The dealer offered us $2500 for the Sentra ($500 more for our trade than anyone else had appraised it for) which is a great price for that steaming pile, took $1k off the top in the offered price and we got a $500 college graduate bonus as my wife just got out of medical school. With taxes, trade in and these discounts we got our SEL+ AWD w/ audiophile, sirius, 18" chrome, roofrack and towing, in copper and charcoal (the only option we didnt get with this one we wanted was the rear cargo management system) for $32k, this is after taxes, compared with the $33.5k MSRP. We thought we had a steal - and we got the 1.9% financing which means only $1200 in interest IF we take all 48 months to pay it back. So the day arrived when we could swap keys and sign the last bits of paper, that morning driving into work i had a little issue with the Sentra..... I got in to the Sentra, turned on the key, the check engine light was still on as it has been for quite some time (multiple mechanics can find nothing wrong given the code for the vacuum system), but added to that was the airbag light, indicating they need to be serviced. A little further down the road the brake light comes on - brake fluid is at a good level, so who knows what that issue was, and the battery light comes on - charging system up the creek, might need to change that alternator belt at a minimum. It was like a disco on my dashboard!!! I gingerly got into work and worried all day that it wouldnt make it to the dealership that evening. Come the evening, the battery had died, so my wife came over and we jumped the car, hightailed it over to the dealership, thankfully all lights but the check engine had gone off, so it was in the "same" condition as when i let them check it for the trade a few days earlier and i was quite happy to let them have the keys! I will gladly never have another Sentra or Nissan darken my door again. We took the Edge out, drove around for work, shopping, on a quick road trip to south Florida and all in all this car is great. Its quiet, has power when needed, smooth gear changes, great sound on the stereo and so far i am beating the EPA numbers (actually with the AWD i am beating the FWD numbers) in town and on the highway. We fit more on the floor of the trunk than we could fit in the entire trunk of either sedan. There is a small downside i didnt recall in my test drives, the doors are a little tight, they could open a little further to allow easier access. What i did notice on the test drive was the manual lumbar pump and manual tilt adjustment rather than power, but thankfully my wife and i sit with approximately the same incline, so no real worries there. The memory seat/mirros are great as she is a little shorter than me. We use that feature a bit as she now likes to drive my Edge over her Accord. Although there isnt a huge selection on the Sirius, i have found plenty to fill the presets and can grab traffic every 4 minutes - less than the time it takes me to reach the highway from my office. I also found that a station i used to listen to in the UK also is on there, which is a nice touch of nostalgia - they even delay it by the time zones so the morning show is on at morning show times, etc. We are going camping this weekend, so between the two of us, the dog and my brother-in-law we should have it pretty well loaded, a little off-road action and plenty of gear - none of which we could really get together in the other two cars. So far its been great, i have yet to tow and am waiting for the roof crossbars on order - as well as a few other things to finish out the car, but performance, fit and functionality is all great for us so far.

That is why the EPA numbers are estimates, they are based on a certain set of road conditions - basically flat, constant speed, no other extras like AC or heating on that suck a little extra power out. So once you add in those other factors of hills, stop/start and using those features, your mileage is likely to suck a little more. I dont know if it will get a load better given the spring/summer or even if the engine is broken in enough already, but i guess just wait and see. This CUV will never get what i had in my Sentra, over 30's in city and on the highway, but that was a 4 cyl sedan, pretty basic. Of course i hope that the Ford will be a little more reliable and less costly to replace breaking parts on!!

Just dont drive like you stole it and the numbers can quite happily be near the sticker. My wife says i drive pretty slowly, but there is barely a time when i am under the speed limit unless there is heavy traffic. As i said before, i dont know if some of you live in hillier areas than flat pancake Florida - however i hit or exceed the numbers. This week i am doing a blind test, just see where i end up MPG-wise on a normal weekly tank of driving to/from work and shops etc, nothing major on the highways and probably nothing really above 50mph on any of the roads - we'll see how that one turns out. Last week i had the MPG on all the time and was watching it to see how it performed under various conditions. My numbers may or may not have been affected by me watching the guage, but on the highway i just drove as i normally do and got between 23 and 25 depending on whether i was going up or down a slight slope here. Just be a little softer in the acceleration, you arent on the track when you are driving around a city, you can still get to the same top speed and cruise - i guarantee that the numbers will go up an appreciable amount. My wife has a lead foot, i always get a couple extra miles per gallon than her, some people just cant drive with a soft foot..... this last tank did over 400 miles, however the low fuel warning was on near the end of that!

You are talking of a difference of 1" in the diameter of the wheel, then of course there is the possible difference in the wall height of the two types of tires. Of course the suspension will raise or lower the car a small amount depending on the amount of load you are carrying and where it is placed in the car, and it goes on from there. Realistically the step-in height is relatively insignificantly changed. I tried both 17" and 18" equipped models and couldnt tell any difference in the step in height, at 6' 3" i can just plant my butt on the seat and slide in without hassle with either model - if there is a difference, you cant perceive it. We bought the Edge with the 18" wheels and my wife's 80 yr old grandmother who cant walk so well was able to get in without much hassle!! Besides the additional bling factor, and unfortunately probably a higher replacement cost when they wear down, the slightly larger wheels usually offer a slightly smoother ride over bumps, that is one advantage to them.

Also put my vote for making some calls. Our insurer, Geico, offered it slightly higher rate than say a RAV-4, however its a newer vehicle without any history or idea of what it might cost to repair, how likely it is to crash given the demographic buying them - all in all, they have quite a bit of risk running right now and they price it accordingly to cover themselves. I should hope that the rates come down on the renewal, but we shall see. This car costs about 200/6 mo more than my sentra did, however they are completely different cars and i stopped carrying comp/coll on the sentra when it past 100k miles. We also have the mechanical breakdown coverage - in place of the extended warranty that Ford offers for a fraction of the price.

No more than 700 on the clock so far, however on regular weekly driving, commuting, shop to shop driving in the city and on some 40mph roads i get 16.5-17mph - we have some of the worst timed lights according to several research teams. This weekend we took our first road trip - 90% highway, 10% around town and we got 23mpg overall, although we did hit 25mpg at 70mph. This is all with the AWD version which is supposed to be a little heavier on gas. There may be a difference between where we drive it and the rest of you - its relatively flat here, hills greater than 10:1 are supposed to drop fuel economy by up to 25%, so consider that when you are thinking of your driving and fuel consumption. The other thing is that i use cruise on the highway to maintain somewhat of a constant speed rather than going up and down the speedometer as many seem to! I also dont pretend this car is a sports car, it has great pickup when needed, however why try to peel out from each stop light just to hit the next red light? So my lighter foot can hit or beat the EPA (have done in every car so far), but you just have to drive smoothly, not like a boy racer!

Just come back from the first roadtrip and driving into the sun for quite a few hours, no troubles with the black interior on glare.

The rear cargo management system was the only option that didnt come from the long list we asked for our dealer to look around for. We were quoted the MSRP for the aftermarket purchase and installation of $315 (inc. the tire cover), way too much for a piece of plastic, so we are sticking with the foam insert that comes standard. I dont know if this price will drop or others will make a similar generic product, but for now we will live and keep the 300!

Isnt this what the warranty is for? Havent received my edge yet, so no reliability data to contribute yet.

People seem to be buying the higher trims (we did), so i can see why they are offering incentives on the lower trims to get them moving too. We got a $500 rebate for my wife having just finished graduate school - that was on an SEL+!

Sticker EPA mileage has a number on there based upon a couple of laboratory tests. The city doesnt include the stop-start that we all do in the real city, just slow speed driving. The highway is done at a slowish 55-60 without AC or any other power (read gas) sucking devices on. The 2008 EPA tests are going to be more realistic, putting in some variety in the driving, just like we actually do when driving. I dont have numbers yet on gas consumption as i havent taken delivery yet, however i also have quite a light foot - not quite grandpa, but certainly not a teen racer!!

I got 1.9% on 48 months in Florida. From what i heard from a variety of dealers the rates posted on msn, yahoo, edmunds for the edge are now in effect.

In the sunshine state you could see it plain as day in the lighter camel interior - that is why i opted for the charcoal. Might soak up a little more heat during the summer on the leather, but also wont glare. Its only really noticible when you are driving into the sun, when its overhead its not as bad.