Gadgetory

may be forgiven for thinking we brought the wrong edge it looks a lot like the outgoing 14 certainly in its general shape and volumes and proportion but the dead giveaway is right here the 15 has this deeply sculpted side where the past edge had this kind of black slab side the grille is a little different the taillights are very much like a fusion which is no coincidence because the edge is largely based on the platform shared with the fusion overall it's about an inch longer and 15 that's not dramatic by any stretch now inside the new edge Ford's done a lot of work to bring it upscale and not be so utilitarian there's the real problem though this head units the equivalent of wearing a Nixon Agnew campaign but I'm not a queer going back it's the my Ford touch with some Sync technology that Ford took a drubbing for four years it's been replaced by sync three unfortunately this 15 edge only offers this outgoing my Ford touch the 16 will bring you the much more desirable sync 3 you know what to do of course the good part of Ford LCD interface is over there in front of the driver where you've got those two helper screens alongside the speedo and those are configurable in almost any variety on the left or change to whatever focus you care about of for choices on the right and they each got a dedicated winged controller on the wheel that's some affords best UI and HMI even if this is kind of the opposite anyway let's take a look at some of the controls down here everything here is now a physical button and they're large and pretty well spaced so this is well done human machine interface here's something new this camera button is going to turn on a front looking cam this is I think a first for Ford overall it gives you that sort of going out forward look when you're sort of nudging out of a blind space you can even go to a really extreme fisheye here our drive controls are pretty straightforward a conventional automatic transmissions er nd s in this case but s isn't a complete cohesive sport mode it's a sport profile of holding gear shifts and a company in this shifter are of course the almost common now paddles on the wheel only one choice though and that is this automatic in the back of our edge we've got an interesting numbers story going on there's another inch of legroom which is nice to have a compact ish crossover and about another inch of shoulder room roughly per two passengers back here here's the proof in the pudding I set up this passenger seat for me up there and now I'm able to sit behind me back here and it doesn't happen in a lot of cars we've got inflatable seatbelts in the back on this vehicle I've also got a nice big panoramic roof up here that extends all the way back to the rear headrest now some things have changed of the engine bay on the new edge and some things have it first of all this is another standard engine the 2-liter the little guy in line for sitting sidesaddle with EcoBoost technology that means a turbocharger and direct injection it used to be kind of a pricey option now it's the base engine it's also now got a twin scroll turbo so a turbo that has two modes of operation to be more responsive additional engines include the three and a half liter v6 and the 2.7 liter four-cylinder EcoBoost butters your new base the numbers drop a little bit it's now 245 horsepower up 5 and 275 pound feet of torque also up five what didn't change is the mpg it still comes in at twenty four average which is twenty City thirty Highway the last edge was 21 City 30 highway but the average comes out the same all of this goes out through a six-speed automatic transmission we have front wheel drive you can also get these guys in all-wheel drive and by the way all it wants is regular gas first thing that struck me about the new edge is the ride quality this is smooth and nice and liquid very compliant I like that I think it's a home run for the market they're going after now the next thing you notice is the powertrain is that ok how's this little 2 litre EcoBoost turbo dueling well it actually does fine as long as you don't let it get buried under car in other words don't find it loafing along and sixth when you need to stab at the power so drop it in sport mode for example get on those paddles and keep things cooking some interesting driver assists on this car one is terribly cutting-edge is lane departure warning and lane departure prevention because it has an electric power steering rack they can address that digitally and tell it to nose you back in that's how they do it perhaps the most interesting though is this new layer of self parking technology now this vehicle adds perpendicular on top of that and also exit mode so if you're too damn dumb to get out of a parking spot you parked in know how that works this will get you out of it that front cameras you know it's useful if you're coming out of a blind spot you gotta hit that button of course you got to think about it manually but it's got a good clear image and they're also quite an elaborate array of surround sensors that are available on this vehicle to augment the front and rear cameras you have no surround camera tech however you get a lot of segments there on the screen as you can see along with various beeps and color-coding to let you know what you're about to spray and coming later not available now as I understand it but in mid model year production will be adaptive cruise and the forward collision automatic braking okay let's do up a fifteen Ford Edge CNET style starts off at thirty six five because that's the price of admission for this titanium trim with front-wheel drive and this is a pre-loaded vehicle but then we check the box for package 302 a Ford's just got away with names don't then that brings you a lot of toys the power liftgate you can wag your foot to open the panoramic roof overhead that new active parking assists the front camera HID headlights blind spot warning the lane departure and prevention I showed you on the road voice based navigation and those rear seatbelts with airbags built in now thirteen hundred more brings you the driver assist package which goes further with adaptive cruise control as well as forward collision mitigation braking that's automatic and for some reason they lump in a tilt telescope wheel with that and my favorite option is dealer-installed three hundred and thirty bucks for a safe in the console what are you gonna put in there you're not James Bond I'd get one too anyway we're looking about forty three eight all in for this guy here's your bottom line on the edge looks a lot better I think but still very familiar more room in the back seat always a good thing that technology and the - that's sad you gotta wait till 2016 I'm afraid and the 2-liter EcoBoost turbo engine is now standard used to be a rather pricey option for cars driven CNET style standing by now at CNET on cars.com click on the road