Newbie

Our daughter who lives north of Tampa has an Escape as her company vehicle. (Employees have a certain model choice range, and this is her second one.) We enjoyed and drove that vehicle for a week while they were on vacation. LOL on the "schlepp". But for our week, I felt the Escape has decent enough power. The Sport mode makes sense because that would change the shift points for more power, which would be the right choice for towing something. Forgot about the electric fan... I guess fans haven't been driven by accessory belts for years. Anyway, we are thinking about something similar for my wife... kinda leaning toward the 14+ Nissan Rogue at this point with the standard rear view camera and not overly complex techy dash, plus nice ride composure for somewhat reasonable price. New to living NW North Carolina...where we got married. Let me know sometime if you recommend AWD or if you figure we'd be just be fine on ice & snow with FWD, (being easy on the throttle and running good winter tires...)

Wow, thanks Stephen.... Yep, understand the whole concern about steep inclines. Low speed lugging doesn't often push enough cooling air thru the radiator. There's a manual trans setting on our TV, so I can select just 1st or second gear and keep that fan blade spinning a little faster, (below redline of course!). Forgot about those occasional steep access ramps up to join the BRP.

Stephen H... how was your experience on the Blue Ridge Parkway as far as towing, camping, etc? We just moved to NC, but surprisingly haven't yet run the WanderPod out on the parkway yet. We toured a portion of it last year while staying around Rollinsville but that was BP (before Pod). At that time, there were huge swarms of fast-approaching crotch-rocket motorcycles, leaning hard into the curves. Mom was along with us, so we'd bail off into a pull-out to occasionally let them by. But generally, I'd be curious about your experience Parkway Podding....

Congratulations and wishing you happy trails!

Congratulations and welcome! We picked up our 179 last December and have about 10,000 miles of towing with it. Our first trip was from North Carolina to Nevada and Arizona. The second long trip was to Louisville, KY. The third was to western New York State. The fourth was to western NC (Cherokee and the "Unto These Hills" pagent), parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway, to New Jersey, Vermont, eastern New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and return. This also includes more limited trips such as a short trip to a nearby park or to the dealer for service. Our R-Pod is great! We tow it with a Ford Escape SE with 2L Ecoboost engine and factory tow package giving us a 3500 lb tow rating. We use an Equal-i-zer hitch. Even though we tow with a smaller vehicle, the turbo makes all the difference. I would not necessarily recommend our TV to anyone, but it is what we have and it works. I hope you enjoy your 179 as much as we are enjoying ours.