My mother’s recent rendevous to France yielded countless amazing photos, but naturally, I gravitated towards the few that included cars. Now the Ford Kuga is hardly a head turning sight, as it’s basically a North American-market Escape with a different name. However, I couldn’t help feeling its rather ordinary appearance was very much complemented by the beautifully preserved Medieval scenery.
Photographed: Pérouges, France – October 2016
What a cool picture. Stuff for calendars, coffee table books or screen wall paper.
+1.
This is a great picture. Perhaps the first time I’ve ever seen a setting that made an Escape look large. 🙂
A while back I was assigned an all-wheel drive 2009 Escape at work. It had the 3.0 V6, a really bouncy ride, got 20 mpg regardless, and had seats that absolutely killed my back. I put about 45,000 tortuous miles on it.
The similar vintage Escape with two-wheel drive and the four-cylinder was even worse. Gads. Both are about the most bleak Ford vehicles I’ve driven in twenty years.
I’ve driven one a few times that had one of the Ecoboost engines and it was light years better in every way. However, I did test drive one with the NA 2.5 when I bought the VW; it was obviously related to the prior generation.
A former colleague of mine had a 2006 Escape in XLT spec (the top spec at that point) that she bought around the same time I bought my 2006 Honda Element. I never particularly cared for her car. The seats were rock hard, despite being leather and heated, and I found the rest of the interior very drab. Hers was a dark charcoal grey that might as well have been black inside. It’s been long enough now that I don’t remember some of the details, so I won’t comment on how well it was put together. I just remember thinking that her car had the things that should make for a nice car but that it didn’t feel that nice.
Oh, and the heated seat button was a small stupid little thing on the side of the seat between the seat bottom and the car door. Sometimes I’d ride to lunch with her and my butt would feel like it was on fire because I couldn’t find the button to turn the thing off. Not sure who thought that was a good location, but I hope they’re no longer at Ford.
Wow, what a beautiful picture! As much as I want to imagine this shot with a Peugeot or a Citroen, the Kuga looks good there.
What a great shot!
When I was at Ford, we often would have a couple of current or upcoming products on stage or outside the auditorium for major events. In 2008 or so (before Ford announced the global Escape/Kuga and we still had the square Escape in North America) we had a Kuga on stage, and I had a chance to look it over and sit in it and whatnot.
At the time, my first thought was “Why aren’t we selling this instead of the Escape?” I thought it was a fantastic vehicle! The one on our stage was noticeably nicer inside than the top-spec Escapes were at the time. The design was much more modern than a lot of the NA stuff was at that time. At that time, every time I saw the Euro-market stuff it was so much nicer than the NA market stuff Ford was doing, enough so that I often wondered aloud if Ford hated America, and the Kuga was another example of that.
A year or two later when they announced that they were making a global version of Escape that was replacing the Kuga as well, I was absolutely delighted because I knew that Ford was finally really getting “it.” Judging from how many of the new Kuga-Escapes I see running around everywhere I go, I was right in 2008 and Ford was right too.
Nice shot! Always liked the contrast of cars against old houses in Europe.
Much of southern France is beautifully built in similar manner, often from local limestone. The cars are usually far more interesting too…
Renault R8, Citroen Traction Avant, a tractor and a motorcycle I don’t recognize.
I wonder what the oldest car is that those walls have seen.
What a lovely street, and a fine juxtaposition with the modern Kuga. This could very easily be a PR photo!
This Escalade contrasts with old Bratislava, just down the hill from St. Michael’s Gate.
My google fu is sadly lacking – best i can do is this corner ….https://goo.gl/maps/z1yJqpuh1kJ2
First thing I saw was, the phantoms of the GIs who fought the Germans building by building in 1944 and 1945. One doesn’t really see much of the car at all.
Not in Perouges, I don’t think. A long way from Normandy or the Ardennes.
Looks like this town was taken by FFA -I think the Americans surrended a few days before
First thing I saw was the beauty of the scene. Second was the excellent parking job the driver did.
When prompted to a negative connotation it was the bubonic plague that killed 1/3 of Europe’s population within 5 years. Every 3rd person who lived in that village was gone. But the beauty of the scene wins.