John Fereira wrote:

If I recall, the Escape Hybrid only gets about 36MPG.

According to Consumer Reports, 22 city 29 highway. The RAV4 (both engines)
gets the same on the highway, but only 15-17 in town.

For about $10 less than the MSRP for the Escape one could get
a Jeep Patriot which is supposed to get 29MPG.

Thanks for the heads up! Consumer Reports has not yet tested the Patriot
and I'm not inclined to believe EPA ratings, so who knows about 29 MPG.
However one thing that excites me is availablilty of manual transmission!
For some reason (perhaps going downhill to put-in?) boaters seem to prefer
manual.

I'm still bamboozled by "automatic" transmission on our Prius. It's odd
that you put the lever up/forward for reverse and down/backward for drive.
But you can't argue with 50 MPG.