Valentine’s Day is a good excuse to go somewhere with the girl I love, so snowboarding in Vermont seemed like a good call, and indeed it was. But wait a minute, I have three cars, and none of them will do! The Mini? Yeah right. Front wheel drive and summer tires pretty much took that out of the equation. Corvette? Aston Martin? Um, no. What about her 1998 Volvo V70XC? That would be fine, except for the fact that her interior looked like Hiroshima on August 7th, 1945. No, what I needed was a car that could carry two people and our respective stuff to Vermont for four days with a minimum of trouble and a maximum of comfort and convenience.

    This is when I called Ford. Tara, one of the friendliest of PR people, informed me that, though the Super Duty F-350 Quad-cab Dually I requested would not be available, nor the pre-production Raptor, they had a Mercury Mariner that should “suit my needs nicely.” I have to admit, my hopes were not high. But, beggars can’t be choosers, and with AWD, snow tires, and a folding rear seat, it would do.

    I will continue this review in the order in which I experienced the Mariner. In the interest of being as specific as possible, I was driving a 2009 Mercury Mariner V6 Premier VOGA Edition. Never heard of the VOGA edition? That’s cool, me either. The good news? I looked it up. VOGA means “fashionable and trend-setting” in Italian, which this particular Mariner could have been…in 1988. I have never seen a whiter vehicle in my entire life. The paint was blinding white, with white trim, and a white interior. And if that wasn’t enough, chrome 17” wheels with VOGA center caps finished off the package.  If I didn’t know better, I might think I was piloting the Sun up the West Side Highway. I’m not sure what parts of the interior had been VOGA-ized, and I’m not even sure I care. But I’ll tell you this: Steven Adler, after an eight-day coke bender, might try to crush up the Mariner and snort it.    

    The Mariner’s 240 horsepower V6 is actually much higher-revving than I expected, and when combined with Ford’s standard 6-speed  autobox, accelerates positively briskly, although the close-ratio cog swapper always requires a downshift for the slightest of pace increases once on the highway. On the other hand, when going up hills the transmission does hold the lower gear until I reach the top of the hill, which you don’t really notice until you’ve got it, and then you wonder why transmissions haven’t done that all along. Strangely though, the transmission only had P-R-N-D-L settings. A 6-speed transmission that can’t be downshifted manually at all? That seems strange, all those gears and no way to shift them. Fortunately the roads in Vermont weren’t slippery enough that I needed to hold a lower gear while descending a hill, so I left it in D and forgot about it.

Let me make one thing very clear: The Mercury Mariner is not a driver’s car. The steering feels reminiscent of my sister’s last-gen Toyota Highlander (not a good thing), and the suspension bumps and bounces over highway ripples like, a drunk fat chick on a mechanical bull. Nor is it a car for any male over six feet tall. Sure, I fit easily in both the driver and front passenger seats, but my girlfriend says I look completely ridiculous in this car. She’s right, as her opinion is seconded, then thirded, and then fourthed by my friends upon our arrival at the ski house. “Men who look like you should not drive compact SUV’s,” she said. “That’s a rule.”

Hey, anything to keep her happy.

    The Mariner’s interior created something of a polarizing love-hate relationship over the course of my vacation. On the one hand, the rear seats fold down flat, creating a cavernous amount of rear storage, and there is tons of legroom for a car of its size. The center console is laid out wonderfully, with lots of smart storage and places to put my cell phone other than in a cup holder. My favorite spot for that is when carmakers don’t have the door pulls go all the way through so you can use them as cell phone pockets. On the other hand, I can’t stand the seats. The VOGA edition is the top trim level for the Mariner line, coming in at over ,000. All cars at that price point should have an adjustable lumbar support and some sort of side bolstering, even if the seat back has manual adjustments. After just 2 hours behind the wheel, I had to get out and stretch my (admittedly bad) back. And although I didn’t sit in the back seats, my two friends, the taller of whom is 5’9”, complained about hitting their heads on the ceiling while riding over bumps. The dash, console, and doors are made of plastic. Not soft touch plastic, or imitation leather, but just regular-old textured hard plastic. Fortunately, the fit and finish of the plastic is good, and the steering wheel and shifter are wrapped in real leather, and that’s where my hands were anyway. That, and I was blind from looking at the white hood spread out in front of me.

    Gadgets and gizmo’s? Check. Make that a double check. I am absolutely in love with the Ford SYNC system. After just a few minutes of fiddling around with the touch-screen infotainment system I was a master of all things music, weather, destination, and traffic related. Connecting my Blackberry via Bluetooth took all of 15 seconds, and I didn’t have to touch my phone at all after that. Calls can be made and received using only your voice, and text messages are displayed right on the screen, provided you have the correct phone (I did!). From the home screen, it only took 4 screen taps to get to the Killington ski report, 2 screen taps to get to local weather, and 5 screen taps to find out if there was any traffic along our route. One more tap re-routed us for 4 miles around the traffic, no problem. I could also look up sports scores for all manner of professional sports, movie times sorted by film title or distance, and seamless iPod connectivity. I have never owned a car, at any price point, which had so many features built in to one unit, and at this level of simplicity. I’ll say it right now. SYNC makes this car. As a matter of fact, I may just go back to buying Ford products because of it. The automatic dual-zone climate control, heated seats, and trip computer with built-in eco-meter rounded out the gizmo count nicely.

    And what about that fuel economy anyway? The Mariner’s window sticker indicated 19/26, which clearly is only attainable if the driver is either a) ninety, or b) has legs so short that they literally cannot press the accelerator all the way to the floor. After over 700 miles of driving, 512 of which were highway, I averaged 19.5 cumulative miles per gallon. It is what it is, and almost 20 mpg out of any SUV on a road trip isn’t noticeably horrible.

    You want to hear something funny? Despite the cocaine-white, non-driver oriented, too-small-for-me Mariner experience, I was actually very impressed with the car. Sure, guys like me aren’t exactly the target market for that car, and that’s fine. But for our specific purposes: a vacation for two in a snowy location, lots of gear and a four-hour drive each way, the Mariner was actually quite perfect. The AWD and snow tires conquered the windy, hilly roads with ease, SYNC’s navigation system took us door-to-door, around traffic, and entertained with no fuss, and the excessive VOGA whiteness made for endless hours of comedy along the way.

    At ,000, the VOGA edition really is too much money for this much car. But, take a V6 Mariner in a normal trim level, throw in heated seats and the SYNC system, and you’ve got a useful, intelligent, conservatively styled car great for a small family, road tripper, or master of all things practical. And you can get it for just under grand. Good call.

 (I stole some of my photos from Jack Baruth in exchange for his choosing the worst quotation ever from me for The Truth About Cars)