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The Escape only seats five, but there's plenty of luggage room aft of the second row. That row also folds nearly to the floor in a 60/40 split. The swing-up tailgate with separately-opening glass hatch makes an easy task of loading stuff into the back, while cubbyholes and a cargo net help keep them in place. With that bright yellow slash of hood in front of us, we could hardly wait to fire up the big six and drive off through the weekday urban skirmishes. At first we noticed little of the engine upgrade. Feather the throttle, and the Escape accelerates with acceptable power delivery, just like the 2.0. Then we kept our eye on the tach; the engine was barely above idle, shifting at 1600 to 1800 rpm. Start feeding the beast more fuel and it begins to growl. A blip to 3000 rpm and you can leave most traffic behind. Go all the way to redline and you have one quick SUV. Factory data for the U.K. Escape V6 posts the 0-100 km/h time at 10.2 seconds. We somehow doubt that because it felt much quicker; we're guessing less than 9 seconds on a good day. To overtake in the 2.0, you'd need to exercise at least three bodily parts: brain to calculate if there's enough road space, and if there's not and you decide to do so anyway, your pair of cojones. With the 3.0, it's much simpler: right foot will suffice to squeeze the Escape into any small gap in traffic. Repeated flexing of that foot will eventually exact a penalty, because energy after all cannot be created from nothing. It was almost a certainty that the V6 will gulp more gas than the inline-4. We registered 5.5 km/liter, less than the 2.0's 6.5 to 7 km/liter. Loss of 1 to 1.5 km/liter but an upgrade to warp speed from impulse power? For us, that's an acceptable tradeoff. What's not is the V6 version's greatly reduced range. The fuel tank remains at 62 liters, which means that it can only go about 275 km before the gauge dips below one-fourth. After two days with the Escape, we had to refill its tank. Three days after that, fuel warning light flashing, we were back at it again. With this vehicle, the fuel pump will soon become your best friend—and the way gas prices are going, your most accursed enemy as well. |
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