pet connection

This was one car I was really, really looking forward to driving. The Ford Edge is a sharp-looking car, at a decent price (starting at $27K) and with decent fuel economy (17/24 for the AWD model, and a tick better for rear-wheel drive). I’m really drawn to the so-called “crossover” vehicles, since they’re smaller than SUVs and handle more like cars than like trucks. Most of all, they show great promise as dogmobiles, with the best of them combing the best of both cars, wagons and SUVs.

The Ford Edge fulfilled some of that promise, just not enough of it to make it as a dogmobile.

As always, I have to get the “what were they thinking?” issue out of the way. This time around: The rear hatch.

Now, I’m not exactly a 90-pound weakling, but I’m not a body-builder, either. And recently, I’ve been having some weakness in my arms because if too much keyboard time. To put it in perspective, I can still lift a 30-pound bag of litter with no problem, or put a retriever on a raised table for grooming.

But I could not single-handedly lift the tailgate of the Ford Edge. The latch is in the middle of the door, which is wider at the bottom than at the top. All the weight is below the ill-positioned handle, which you touch from underneath to unlatch and then press up and out to lift the tailgate. The angle and balance are just awful, and I imagine some poor woman trying to lift it with one arm and her other around a toddler balanced on her hip. No can do.

To see if I was being fair, I asked my brother, a 40-something high school football coach, to give it a try. He, too, couldn’t believe how difficult it was to raise the tailgate, although he was certainly able to do it one-handed.
So … what were they thinking? I wouldn’t buy this vehicle solely on that issue, because almost every time I’m opening the rear gate on a vehicle I have one arm holding something else — a leash, a bag of litter, a grocery sack. With this car I’ve have to put down what I was holding and use both arms to lift the tailgate. I’ve driven other cars with latch-release in the middle of the rear door — such as I’m driving one now, the Subaru B9 Tribeca — and they’ve managed to engineer a liftable gate. Didn’t anybody try this out at Ford? Shame on you, boys.

That tailgate was the only glaring problem with the Edge. Everything else was on the high side of average for a family car, if not for a dogmobile. Comfortable to ride in, zippy to drive, easy to handle. The rear seats dropped down flat with more ease than another vehicle I’ve driven thus far. The test-model I had came equipped with an easy-to-use GPS system, and it came in handy when the directions I had to a hotel near the San Francisco airport were about three exits up from where the place actually was. I called the hotel, popped in the address and was there in a jiff.

I continue to be frustrated with the way interior cargo space usability is sacrificed for exterior design. The round edges of the Edge and the downward slope of the vehicle’s rear rendered lots of the interior cargo space unusable. It’s the old square peg/round hole problem I’ve written about before. Rounded edges are the trend in design, but everything you want to put in a vehicle — dog crates, boxes, suitcases, etc. — is square.

In the end, the Edge gets top grades for comfort, perfomance and styling, but bupkus for utility. If you want a vehicle for two-legged family, for occasionally taking gear or a pet to the vet, you’ll be fine with an Edge. But as a dogmobile for a commiteed dog-nut … give it a pass.

Sorry, Ford. You know I love ya, and hate to kick you when you’re down. But would it be too much to ask to put some utility in a utility vehicle?

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