Auto News 5

The road from Stinson Beach to the top of Mt. Tamalpais is a classic California hill-climb, a narrow, twisting, dipping, heaving, unpredictable ribbon of off-camber asphalt that tests the mettle of car, driver, and, especially, passenger. Ford Escape chief engineer Eric Loeffler, riding shotgun in an all-wheel-drive 2013 Escape SE, seems unfazed. I'm taking the SUV to the edges of its performance envelope, revving the 1.6-liter turbo four to its 6375-rpm redline, diving into corners, braking without equivocation, and creating my own private racing lines where the road opens up into broad sweepers. In other words, driving exactly unlike 99 percent of Escape owners will ever drive. Loeffler, though, needs to be back at his Fisherman's Wharf hotel by 5 o'clock so that he can get to the San Francisco airport. He's heading to China, where he's working on the Escape's identical twin, the Ford Kuga, which will be sold there for the first time. I am an obliging chauffeur, a willing participant in Ford's global product-expansion plans.