jeff_h

She had an 05 Escape Hybrid and for the 05-08(?) model years the interior was "basic" (the nice term) although some may call it "cheap" (maybe more accurate) -- I think it was the 09 or so model year where they upgraded the interior a bit? But I don't know, didn't keep up much with them. When she would drive it around town she would average 25 MPG, when I drove it I would average 29MPG but I always tried to drive as smoothly as possible. And you're right, when the temp goes way down so does the MPG!

That's true, I think the Escape got a re-design in the past couple years. My wife had an Escape Hybrid and now has an Edge, she likes the Edge better but her MPG has been cut in half, so be prepared for that if you make the switch -- I agree with Mr Kirby, maybe you should take a look at the latest Escape Hybrid and see what you think? Good luck!

We bought my wife's Edge in NJ, got the extra $1k for their financing... a couple days later I started the process with my credit union to refinance, ended up making one payment to Ford Credit, refinance paid off the rest, there was no restriction or penalty.

I hear you, not much fun when it happens at Six Flags either... I love the keypad!

I agree -- I have looked into these before when shopping around, come to find out that in many cases they throw in things like $500 for recent college graduate buyer, $500 military member buyer, etc to advertise the highest rebate amount. Most people do not qualify for those, even fewer would qualify for both of these, however they do a good job of getting you in the door and once you are in the door you get new car fever a little bit more and don't care as much about the final cost since you really really want to drive home the new car. Sorry you felt accosted by the doubting Thomases, so many of us have just seen it/done that many times before. I'm interested to find out what kind of deal you end up with, please let us know!

My wife has a 2010 Edge and we each have an iPod Nano 5th Gen, either one works fine with normal USB cable and sync.

I used to be stuck in the mindset of every 3,000 from following that pattern for 20 years... however I've lightened up a bit and now go every 5,000. Too stuck in my old ways to let it go for 7,500 and 5,000 is both a compromise and very easy to track when looking at the odometer.

The number on the reminder bill I just received (6 months is about up) is 866-849-7474 -- again, good luck!

The data that goes onto the USB from PC to vehicle and then back again appears pretty small as far as USBs go, I think they are normally about 6MB downloading to PC and then less than 100k (maybe far less, I don't remember exactly) to upload the confirmation files. The only issue I've ever had was getting my USB drive to work the first time, which required me to reformat it to FAT32 and try again and then all went well. I don't believe there will be any issues having existing files on the drive but always have those USB files backed up just in case.

I bought 2 extended warranties from myfordwarranty.com which is a Ford & Honda dealer in Rhode Island, it is a Ford Warranty and I saved $600 (on each car) from what my local dealer wanted (ordered online and got the confirmation papers in the mail about 7 days later). I believe these add-ons are where local dealers make a lot of profit because the purchaser is enamored with their new car and most consider all that paperwork mumbo-jumbo such a hassle and just sign so they can drive away with their new car -- but then if they look more closely they see that they've been more generous to their dealer than they thought.

See the linked article below, which states that over 50,000 airbags are stolen from cars each year, and that one may not know if until they get into a crash and there is no airbag in place to deploy. Who knows if this has anything to do with the car you looked at, but when you noted the cockeyed airbag cover that's the first thing I thought about. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/airbag-theft.htm

Here is the URL to get the window sticker for new inventory, no idea if it would work for a VIN that is a few years old but it's worth a try, right? Replace the last part with your VIN and see how it goes.... good luck. http://www.inventory.fordvehicles.com/services/inventory/WindowSticker.pdf?vin=2FMDK4KC0BBA29795

No, they are just white plastic frame with white paper-type filter element. Appears to cost about $1 to make but sells for about $10-20 or whatever the OP's Amazon link shows, not much to the filters actually.

You may also want to reboot your iPod and then try again, I've found the Nanos to be more finicky than the old clunky but trusty iPod Mini that I used to have. Hold center button and "menu" at the same time for about 3-5 seconds, screen will go blank and then the apple icon will show, let go of buttons and it will take about 5-10 seconds or so to come back to main screen -- then try to connect to USB and Sync and see how it goes.

Same here, I was in favor of waiting for the 2011 for the better features, my wife said she didn't care and it was going to be her car, so we went with the $4,000 rebate (which would not as been as high on the 2011) and she's very happy.