My dad called me from Arizona (They live in Lynnwood near Seattle). He has a 2005 Ford Escape V6. My mom and him drove down to Mexico through Wyoming and Colorado and are now on the return trip home. He said he had two tank fills now that were over 27 MPG! One was 27.4. I've heard of other owners getting near 18 MPG with the same rig. My hybrid Escape is currently getting 30.0 MPG but this certainly holds a candle to that!

All I can figure is the higher elevations, highway speeds, and long coasting runs helped his mileage, which has been around 24 in the past in town. He said he thinks it does really well at 65 MPH on the highways too - efficient enough to work with the slipstream and still covering appreciable ground for the amount of fuel used by the 3.2L.

 

We got 21 MPG in a v6 4WD Ford Escape Limited we rented in Colorado for a week. About 30% highway driving and 40% mountain pass driving and 30% city speed driving on relatively flat roads.

 

I had a 2004 with the 3.0L V6 before I bought the hybrid '05. I did one long trip in it and once on the open highway in favorable weather, keeping the speed reasonable (speed limit), it did pretty well. For the 3200 mile round trip, my tanks were as follows:

24.9 27.2 23.9 23.7 21.9 20.9 27.4 23.3 21.9 21.0 23.1

This was a trip from Boston to Mississippi and back. The overall trip average was 23.6 which wasn't bad. The 20.9 tank in the middle was all local driving. The rest were 24 hour straight highway driving, so the engine never cooled off. The temps on the ride back were probably 25-30° cooler than the trip down. Low temps hurt that one too.

It was the commuting mileage that forced me to rid myself of the '04. I was lucky to get 16 or 17 commuting to work. That hurt since it was as bad as the DOHC 4.0 Explorer I traded in for it.