As chief engineer on the Ford Edge, Elaine Bannon is hoping for another hit.
Elaine Bannon has a secret she’d rather not keep.
Bannon is a glamorous 48-year-old mechanical engineer and MBA whose job it is to produce winners for Ford Motor Company, including the Ford Edge, Ford Flex, Lincoln MKX and Lincoln MKT – in fact, all of Ford’s crossover utilities.
One of the industry’s best-kept secrets is that Edge is the best-selling vehicle in its market segment, and has been almost from the minute it was introduced in 2006 as a 2007 model.
As chief engineer for these four vehicles, Bannon brings to the job her vast experience in body engineering, body design, chassis engineering, heavy-duty commercial vehicles, plastics and manufacturing, among other things, in a 25-year career.
Bannon has been in charge of the award-winning (J.D. Power IQS and APEAL awards) Edge program since its inception in 2005, and she says that, increasingly, Ford is leaving its senior managers in place because of their accumulated experience and relationships to the other senior team members.
The 2011 Ford Edge makes it bow at the Chicago Auto Show.
“When you know each other, and you trust each other, it just makes for a better product. You have a consistent set of expectations about what’s going to make a better product. It’s so competitive right now that you have to be at the top of your game all the time.”
As the product matures, she says, “You’ve got to listen to what people are telling you. I spend a lot of time doing that, so we can make year-to-year changes that surprise and delight the people. All the little things add up, and people notice them.”
Bannon, a runner, inveterate gym rat, poetess, mother of a young son, and recent widow (her husband Chuck succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, after a three-year battle), says the first order of business for a five-seater CUV is finding convenient, logical and secure places for all your stuff, storage nooks which she and her team have engineered into the door pockets, center console and center stack. After that, she ranks comfort and quiet, and only then electronics and entertainment.
One of her proudest accomplishments in the program is the Edge Sport itself, a vehicle that was not in the original product plan. She and her vehicle engineering manager, Rich Kreder, took one look at the production Edge, and decided that it needed something like the “Bullitt” version of the Mustang GT.
They got together with colleagues from vehicle personalization, vehicle engineering, and chassis engineering, and invented the Edge Sport for 2009, with its extreme 22-inch wheels, tires, suspension, and interior and exterior décor, with major powertrain upgrades coming for 2011.
“Everybody just wanted to do it, so we did it!” she says with her pride showing.
Bannon’s Edge will be thoroughly freshened for the 2011 model year with a new hood, front fenders, front fascia, grille, headlamps and taillamps, new 18- and 20-inch wheels, and of course, 22-inch wheels for Edge Sport.
The updated Edge will be the first vehicle in Ford’s North American line-up powered by the new 2.0-liter EcoBoost turbocharged inline 4-cylinder engine, which will carry a whopping 30% increase in fuel economy.
The 2011 Ford Edge also will offer a revised 285-horsepower 3.5-liter V-6 engine with variable camshaft timing, while the Edge Sport will come with the larger and more powerful 305-horsepower 3.7-liter V6 engine, also with VCT.
All three engines will be mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission with manual controls, and the Edge Sport will offer paddle shifters on the steering column.
The new Edge will be the first Ford CUV to offer MyFord Touch, an advance on the original Sync system, plus Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), the MyKey system for restricting vehicle speed for young drivers, and Adaptive Cruise Control.
The Edge Sport will feature 22-inch polished aluminum wheels with black-trimmed spokes, a black grille, smoked headlamp and taillamp covers, body-color rocker moldings, oval chrome exhaust tips, body-color door cladding and new body-color lower front and rear fascias. Adaptive Cruise Control, Collision Warning with Brake Support, Blind Spot Information System with Cross Traffic Alert, and Intelligent Access with Push-Button Start will all be offered on the 2011 Edge.
But the real kicker in the new 2011 Edge, also coming to the other three of Bannon’s vehicles, is the new MyFordTouch technology, which turns the center console area of the CUV into what she calls a “media hub,” with iPod connectivity, two USB ports, an SD card port, video input jacks, and three 12-volt power ports.
The system uses two sets of five-way buttons mounted on the steering wheel, placed so a driver’s thumbs can control menu commands and select functions. There’s an 8-inch LCD screen in the center stack with two 4.2-inch screens in the instrument cluster to provide color-coded vehicle, HVAC, navigation, telephone and infotainment information.
The voice control system now includes a “flattened grammar” system that simplifies commands and introduces voice control for more features, such as audio tuning and climate control.
The MyFord Touch system can be upgraded to include a Sony Audio System, a Sony-designed electronic center stack panel with a gloss black finish and touch-sensitive controls. The Sony panel is completely flat (except for the center knob). There are 12 speakers and a digital amplifier producing 390 watts of continuous power (RMS) with Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound.
Also available on the 2011 Ford Edge is the world’s first implementation of iTunes tagging in a factory-installed radio receiver. A push of the “Tag” button on the touch screen stores the song information in the radio’s memory. Up to 100 tags can be stored until the iPod is connected. When the iPod is then synced to iTunes, a playlist of tagged songs will appear. Customers can preview or purchase and download tagged songs from the iTunes Store.
The Detroit Bureau will be test-driving the 2011 Ford Edge and Edge Sport the week of August 2, so stay tuned for our first impressions of Elaine Bannon’s baby.