I've been driving my Ford Edge now for a little over a year and it has a few quirks. Keep in mind that my previous vehicle was a 1998 and I took quite a technological leap forward with the Edge. I call it my James Bond car because the only gizmo it's missing is the hidden rocket blasters. I like this car in a lot of ways, but oh, those quirks...
The first thing I noticed--and it's hard to miss--are the phantom vehicles coming from my left or my right. The beeping is hugely annoying, especially when I'm inside the one-car garage. No, Edge, there's really NOT another car coming on either side of me. It scares the life out of me every time it sounds, but I don't want to turn it off because some day it might save me from an accident.
And then there's the auto setting on the climate control. I have the temperature set for 72 degrees, so when it's 60 degrees outside, there's no reason why the air conditioner should kick in and yet it does. Frequently. The system also likes a high, loud fan. Me? Not so much.
The car is also makes decisions for me on my wiper blades. If I use the intermittent setting and it decides it's not raining hard enough, the wipers won't go. Honestly, I don't care what the car thinks about it, if I have them on, I want them running. The only way around it is to put them on the steady setting.
The corollary is that sometimes when the car stops running the wiper blades on its own, I don't notice because I would have turned them off. Then, suddenly, on a sunny afternoon, the wiper blades will run and I'm totally going WTH?
But the last couple of weeks, the car has started a new quirk. It's turning on the radio every time I start the car. If I'd left the radio on, that would be one thing, but I haven't. In fact, I turn it off well before I turn off the car. I had to Google this one. It turns out there's an auto on feature for the entertainment system.
I didn't know that because it wasn't coming on automatically before the last couple of weeks. That was easy to turn off in the settings, so I hope that silences the sound because as much as I like Adam Ant's "Goody Two Shoes," I really don't want to hear it before sunrise.
All these complaints make it sounds as if I don't like the car, but I do. It's probably my second favorite vehicle, but it tries to do too much for me and it tries to anticipate too much. The James Bond car totally needs to chill a little.
