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The Ford Escape was Ford’s first Crossover Sport Utility Vehicle. When it was launched, it hit the sweet spot in the SUV market… good size, great interior package, super visibility, well-priced, looked like an SUV. Over the years, Ford essentially did nothing to the Escape to keep it overtly fresh except launch the Escape Hybrid – a really good move, but not something that sold huge volumes of Escapes.

Now, for the 2008 model year, Ford has implemented what the industry calls a “front and rear six”. This means that, keeping doors, roof, windshield, windows, etc the same, Escape gets new styling for the front “six inches” and for the rear “six inches”. In addition, the Escape gets an interior freshening.
The puzzling part of the Escape redo, however, is the use of a eggcrate grille rather than the horizontal bar motif now rolling out on Ford Edge and Explorer and Expedition. While these three SUVs all are on the market now with the new-look Ford Truck front end, Ford insiders confess that the Escape’s front end styling was approved before the Edge, et al and that there would have been a delay if they had circled around to do the “right thing”. Reality bites.

We have always like the Escape. But frankly, the freshening for 2008 is modest at best especially in light of the intense competition in the Crossover Sport Utility Vehicle arena. The fact that Ford did not use the new-look front end styling on a 2008 model year vehicle is another glitch in its styling strategy that should not have been allowed to happen.