You can hate the “slopers” if you want, but Ford Escape sales are not down with the new design.
http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/1401-ford-sales-december-2013/
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The Escape ran almost neck-and-neck with the Fusion in December, although the crossover managed to slightly edge out the sedan for sales. That performance pushed the Ford Escape to its best sales year ever, with a total of 295,993 sales last year — a 13.4-percent year-over-year increase and enough to make the Escape the second best-selling Ford of 2013. That could be enough for the Escape to finally unseat the Honda CR-V from the top of the crossover sales chart.
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I drove some Ford Flex’s working at the dealer as a tech.
They remind me of old station wagons.
Comfortable cars I was surprised how much I liked them.
I’m 50 YO so I know what a wagon feels like.
They’re down.
Add in the loss of thousands of Mercury Mariners and Mazda Tributes and you see what a disaster Ford has with the new redesign.
In 2008 my employer retired my full-size van in favor of a new Escape. I didn’t like it at first (hated the transmission) but after one winter season with the full-time all wheel drive you couldn’t pry it from my fingers. After almost four years they swapped it for one of the new slopers. I was impressed at first at the apparent increase in power but it had terrible visibility problems and didn’t handle for shyt in the ice and snow. Then they took all of our vehicles away as part of a cost savings program and now I’m back to driving a 10-year old Blazer - that out-performs the new Escape in the snow.
YMMV