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| There it stands, like a bully waiting to beat up a sickly kid. |
When I started this blog, I didn’t intend to write about
utility vehicles and transportation appliances. To the contrary, I intended to
focus on the obscure and the forgotten; unloved sports cars and coupes, hot
hatches, and the almost good. I knew I wasn’t going to write about exotics
because everyone does that, plus I don’t have access to such machinery and
would seriously question the judgement of anyone who would grant me that
access. To borrow a line from Groucho Marx, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any
club that would have me as a member.”
I think I find myself so often musing on automotive
equivalent of the rope and shovel because of the grudging respect I have for
the pack mule that plows the field while the stallion gallops free. The daily
driver is like someone who volunteers to hold the jackets, glasses, and novelty
foam hats while everyone else rides the roller coasters. The fun you get from
your frivolous cars is owed somewhat to the silent suffering of your utility
vehicle.
Elsewhere in this blog, I waxed effusive about my 1997
all-wheel-drive Chevy Astro van. That packing crate of a truck hauled, towed,
and four-wheeled its way into our hearts. The Astro was just about the perfect
wheeled-burro for the insufferable gear-head. I won’t go over my reasoning as
it is immortalized in the Chevy Strangelove piece (the link to the article is here,
and please remember to visit our gift shop on your way out).
While looking for a replacement Astro I came across a 1995
GMC Jimmy that was too good to pass up. It was in near-perfect condition and
the price was right. That Jimmy was the first SUV I had ever owned. I liked the
Jimmy; it was handy, sized right, and this one also had the coveted towing
package. My time with Mr. Jimmy was short lived, however. A family friend borrowed
it and this happened:
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When good Jimmys go bad. Jimmy doesn’t like to be flipped
over, being flipped over makes Jimmy mad.
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Thankfully no one was seriously hurt but I learned two
lessons; never lend a vehicle to an inexperienced city driver to navigate
twisting country roads, and second, even cheap vehicles should carry a little
more than basic liability insurance.
The demise of the GMC left me without a utility vehicle, and
with no check from the insurance company, little funds to replace it.
I have noticed that the market for beater cars, cockroaches
selling for $3000 or less, ebbs and flows like the tide of vast cheap-skate
ocean. The ebb is usually when I’m in the market and the flow is any other
time.
Sure enough, when I needed to replace the Jimmy there was an
immediate beater-car drought. I looked for an Astro but with the pocket change
I had to spend, $0 to $3,000, my choices were rust buckets on their last leg or
rust buckets on a prosthetic limb.
We interrupt this article for a public service announcement.
If you buy a cheap van and want to keep it for any length of
time, just remove the engine and replace every seal, gasket, belt, freeze plug,
and hose. No, really, do that first thing or you will forever be cursing the
diabolically inaccessible maintenance points of an old van. The rule of thumb
in vans is that everything easily accessible from the “dog house” interior
engine cover will last forever and the parts hidden in the deep recesses of
no-man’s-land will break early and often.
The lack of beaters and Astros meant I was forced into my resource of last resort; the public auto auction (cue scary organ music).
I may write an article about navigating the public auto
auction some other time, but for now, here’s a quick tip; don’t go during tax
return season. From April to July the auctions are filled with people
brandishing government-sourced Monopoly money. Here in the Northeast, prices
double during that period as inexperienced auction buyers get bidding fever
driving tired Cavaliers into Lexus money. The frenzy is so bad that I honestly
believe you could put an oil stain left by an old Taurus on the block and
create a bidding war.
Unfortunately, it was that very season that found me at the
big city auto auction, choking on second-hand cigarette smoke and grappling
with a mass of humanity that was intent on displaying a preview of a future
societal breakdown.
Cut to the chase: I came home with a 2004 Ford Escape,
170,000 miles, V6, and puppy-matic, for the tax season inflated sum of $1700.
In the non-tax auction season, this vehicle would have crossed the block at $900-1100
maximum. But $1700 for a good running, all-wheel-drive mini-ute is still cheap.
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| The Escape fresh from the indignity of the auto auction. |
The Escape was looked after from a service standpoint but
wow, was it filthy. The stains, smells, and left-over food populating the interior
was like driving a rolling crack house. What manner of humanity lives like
this? Folks, there are garbage cans every three feet in America, including the
cans at arm’s length at the gas station, why drive a mobile landfill? The
capper was an ice cream bar of unknown vintage filling the passenger side map
pocket. I don’t know what ice cream bars are made of but from the looks of the
congealed mess it had no affiliation with anything coming from a cow.
Now with 206K on the clock, the Escape has been a good
vehicle. The handling between the car-based Ford and the truck-based GMC is
like the difference between a Sunday afternoon nap versus a colonoscopy; one
easy and natural, the other uncomfortable and little dangerous. The Escape
lacks the Jimmy’s low range transfer case but my off-road adventures are
limited to snow covered roads, muddy wooded tracks, and the occasional farmer’s
field and shallow stream crossing. The Escape has handled all these
“soft-roading” tasks with ease. I have also towed a utility trailer and have
loaded it with kayaks, bikes, and camping gear. It’s a good little ute, rugged enough and civilized enough; there’s a reason Ford sold
bajillions of them.
One final note on the little Ford Ginger and I call the
Es-cah-pay; conventional wisdom would dictate the new Escape is far better than
the old one. Here in the first world, we expect technology to march stubbornly
forward with our new toys being better than our old toys. I’m sure the new
Escape is world’s better than mine; more power, better fuel economy, more tech,
more sophisticated all-wheel-drive system, etc.
Is it, however, a better SUV?
Back when the Escape was designed, SUVs were truck based and
people expected off-road capability even if they never set a wheel off
pavement. I can imagine at the design meetings for the Escape, someone looking
at the renderings of the little ute raises a hand and asks, “Sir, what if some
rube in fly-over country actually tries to off-road in this thing?”
As a concession to off-road pretense, the first-generation
Escape has its wheels pushed to the corners creating good approach and
departure angles. The car has a beefy differential befitting a truck, good ground
clearance, and wide box channels for added frame strength. The Escape seems to be positioning itself as
the missing link between truck SUVs and the completely car-like ones of today.
I like the compromise, and so far, it’s taken everything I’ve thrown at it with
nary a complaint.
To illustrate, see ill-advised video here:
Video by Steve Schrader.
So, the lesson here is that sometimes newer is not better.
The first-generation Escape has what the first-generation Mustangs, Miatas, and
Jeeps have; purity (if a half truck, half car can be pure). Ford’s first
attempt at a car-based SUV, for me, is the perfect compromise between car and
truck; car comfort and handling with a certain amount of ruggedness and
utility. It’s not an Astro, but it’s doing the parts fetching, junk yard
trolling, and mild off-roading just fine.
Marve Harwell (C) 2017
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