I'm on the more power crusade too (actually wish they could just drop the Buick 3800 in there and call it good). But- I put a few thousand miles on a AWD Freestyle Limited, and found out it feels slower than it actually is. With the transmission, the engine can be slowing down while the car's speeding up. When you mash the throttle, though, it picks itself up and flat scoots. The other thing I noticed is that it gets substantially better gas mileage than a V6 Escape.