Well mine finally came in!!. Ordered mid October, and I picked it up April 12. The car seems perfect, and worth the wait. First 200 miles shows avg mpg of 31.9 on the indicator. I haven't yet put any gas into it, so I can't say how accurate that is. The dealer honored the price quote he gave me when I ordered it.

I have to admit, its really fun to drive around town in stealth mode, I went almost a mile in Saturday traffic without the ICE starting.

Its quite a bit different than my HCHII

 

I just discovered this forum and after reading some on the stories, I think I lucked out. I ordered my FEH (kiwi green 4WD) in late October and got it on 12/24 (quite the Christmas present), which was the quickest turnaround my dealer had seen on a custom order. My fiance and I tracked the inventory in the Denver area for a couple of months hoping to find one in stock, but they would sell within a day or two of hitting the lot, if they lasted that long. Since the dealership couldn't keep any in stock to test drive, the salesman had his wife bring their personal FEH from home so that I could try it out before I finalized the order.

Now that I've had it for a few months, I can honestly say it was worth the wait. We were stuck driving in a blizzard in Wyoming recently and it performed like a champ. The road was covered with snow and ice and winds were in the 50-70 miles per hour range and we didn't get blown around or lose traction once in 70 miles (there were dozens of other vehicles along the way who weren't so fortunate). And the cherry on top was that our gas mileage was still 30 mpg despite probably having the AWD working a good part of the drive and running the heater and defrosters non-stop.

 

I just heard that my 2008 MMH will be built the week of May 19 and arrive right at the end of May. It is a 4WD base model and I ordered it around February 1. I guess it will be one of the last 2008s built.

 

I got my 2008 FEH last week. Walked onto the dealer lot, picked the one I wanted out of about 25 or so available, and that was it.

Galpin Ford of North Hills, CA is the number 1 volume dealer in the world, so they keep a lot of everything on hand. They also had several Mariner hybrids and a half dozen Mazda Tribute hybrids.

 

FEH and MMH are rare in NC - usually one or two in the entire state at a time (often none). I have passed on about 10 that were within easy driving distance but came loaded or were FWD. Ordering one seems to be the only way to get one here that was 4WD and not loaded.

 

The AWDs were loaded here also, but they had what I wanted (Premium pkg with no Nav or sunroof). So I'm driving an AWD; I would have preferred the FWD.

The FWD FEH and the MTH were fairly basic. The MMH all had leather, NAV, and sunroof.

The salesman told me that Ford often changed the packages that the dealer ordered, especially when there are parts shortages. He also said that Ford ships a certain percentage of allocations to Ford (not dealer) requirements; an additional portion is dealer requested builds (but may be modified by Ford). The rest are customer orders, which I think have to match the order exactly.

Evidently there was a shortage of backup sensors for ALL Escapes (normal and hybrid). Of the 80 or so Escapes (FEH and ICE) on the lot, only two had the backup sensors - one FEH and one ICE. I bought the FEH.

 

I picked up my new 2008 MMH AWD yesterday. It took 4 months to get it from date of order. I am really enjoying the vehicle. I managed a reading of 34.0 mpg on the display on the return from the dealer (about 50 miles) and 33.5 on the way to work (about 24 miles).

 

Yeah, you should do pretty well with those kinds of trips if you can keep your highway speed down. My trips are only about 5 miles, just about the worst possible for MPG. Right now I'm at 31.5 on my display, but it is a struggle.

So far my display has been a bit high, maybe 1.5 - 2.0 MPG high based on my hand-calculated values.