+1 on Dr. Z's review. I just returned a black '14 Edge Limited AWD at YYZ last night. I didn't take any pictures, but the vehicle I had looks exactly identical to the one Dr. Z rented, save for the Ontario vs Virginia plate.

I had the car for 5 days, and loved it. The vehicle I got was brand new, and I think I was the first one to rent it. Loved the seats, the Sony audio system, MyFord Touch, everything. You put your foot down in this car, and it flies.

*Brag warning* Oh, and Dr. Z, maybe the Captiva's are just south of the border. I picked up my brand spanking new Edge Limited from the ES.

My conclusion on the car is everything that Dr. Z wrote. I agree with him 100%, but I'll add my $0.02.

I only had a couple of complaints:

Low speed steering, as Dr. Z mentioned. I really had to put a lot of effort into turning the wheel at low speeds, which I felt was unusual, but makes sense now after reading his review.

The ultrasonic rear parking aid was somewhat annoying. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice feature to have, and can be turned off if you don't want it. But every time I was backing into a spot, it would start screaming about the vehicle parked next to me, even while it was in the "green" zone of the parking guidelines on the camera. The car opens up the "On/Off" menu for the rear park aid every time you put the gearshift into reverse, and I found that after the first two or three times I was parking (I almost always back in when parking), I would just shut it off because it would find a parked car or traffic cone that was a safe distance away and just start beeping. I could have just turned off the parking beeper entirely, but I wanted to experiment with it over the course of the whole rental. My personal vehicle does not have this feature, and in the past, I've thought that if it did, it would help me while parking in reverse. Now, I'm not so sure. I think I might go mental if it beeped at me all the time.

The last complaint isn't really a fault of the car. It's more a policy of National. I don't know if this is company-wide, but at least at YYZ, they had removed the SD card for the factory navigation system, thereby disabling it entirely. I called the location to see if maybe it was a mistake with this one vehicle, and the rep said no, that they are deliberately removed because in the past, they have been stolen from the vehicles.

When I returned the car, I mentioned that to the greeter and asked him, "Why not just let us use the Nav, and charge the renter when an SD card goes missing?" He answered that he believed that they used to do that, but National maintains so many cars across the entire fleet, so its hard to keep track of the SD cards in each vehicle. Or, its easy for an employee to forget to check the SD card when a car is returned. I can understand that, especially because vehicles are not always returned to the same location on one-way rentals, or airports with more than one rental location across multiple terminals. It still bites, though. I would have really liked to use the Ford nav system rather than my cell phone. Thankfully, the wife was with me, so I didn't have to break any distracted driving laws.

CONCLUSION/TLDR -- I loved the Edge and all of the bells and whistles that it came with. The audio system in my Subaru pales in comparison with the stuff that Ford is putting in nowadays, and I'm now jealous. I didn't pay too close attention to the odometer when I picked up the car, but I think it had only 7.5 km's on it when I picked it up. So as far as I know, it had never been driven, and I wanted to stick it in my suitcase and take it home with me!! But I still love my Subaru...it would have been jealous of the Ford anyway. Plus, the airline said I couldn't bring the Edge home because it weighed more than 50lbs. They wouldn't even take it as oversize baggage. Jerks.

But seriously, after this experience, plus the Fusion I had last year, I will be looking for a Ford every time I rent a vehicle in the future. And the next time we have to buy a new car, provided that Ford can keep up the good work, I will be taking a long hard look at the Fusion/Taurus/Edge/Explorer.