Ford Edge (2015)

Excellent, refined suspension system. This car has a fantastic combination of comfort and handling that really surprised us. It’s easily comparable to European luxury crossovers. The handling is not at all floaty, like the larger Explorer. It’s precise and agile for a large vehicle, with surprisingly flat cornering, little body lean, and good road holding. Yet the Edge gives up very little in comfort to get its Euro-style handling. The ride is comfortable, with bumps and road irregularities well absorbed.

Smooth power from the four-cylinder, “Ecoboost” engine. The 2.0-liter, four cylinder engine produces 245 horsepower and accelerates the pretty heavy Edge easily, without any turbo lag. The six-speed automatic transmission is more or less unnoticeable, which is exactly what you want from an automatic transmission. You won’t miss a V6 at all.
Roomy. Unlike the narrow-feeling Escape, the Edge feels spacious inside. Seats are comfortable and supportive, and even rear seat passengers have lots of leg, head, and knee room.

Getting in and out of the Edge is also easy, front and rear, due to ample door openings. There is also a generous amount of cargo room behind the rear seats.

Simple, clean design. Both inside and out, the Edge is pretty straightforward. Some may consider this a drawback. But others will like the lack of flash and twisty sheet metal. It has a boxy, tank-like exterior, and simple, but high quality interior.

Speaking of tank-like, there’s something about the position of the driver’s seat and the large, flat hood that makes the front of the Edge look massive when you’re driving it. It’s not, but the flat hood gives the impression of greater bulk than actually exists.

Offers a good array of optional safety equipment on the higher trim variants.  We’d highly recommend the blind spot monitoring, even though it comes as part of an expensive luxury package.  And we’d recommend the automatic emergency braking, for $1,300.  All dressed up, our Edge Titanium all-wheel drive, even without the emergency braking, was tagged at $43,585.

Cons
Our fuel mileage is mediocre. Even with the four-cylinder engine, we got an average of only 19 mpg in our more-city-than-highway testing.  EPA says 20 to 28 with a 23 MPG average.

Visibility is limited. There’s virtually no visibility to the rear sides, due to very thick C pillars. That makes the optional blind spot monitoring an absolute necessity, and makes the standard rear view camera an important tool.

The Ford Sync system requires you to touch the screen for various functions. And the screen is enough of a reach to make that inconvenient while driving. Other manufacturers have opted for a mouse-like controller to deal with that issue. Ford has not. A newer, updated Sync system is due next year.