I’m going to be a spoiler here . . .
Personally, I don’t think this was a submerged and/or flood car
I think this is just lousy rust prevention on Ford’s part . . . I"m in agreement with @Triedaq on this
And possibly/probably not hosing the undercarriage frequently enough
Hosing down the underbody is not practical in a Western NY winter. For one thing your outside faucet is turned off and drained so the pipe going to it doesn’t freeze and burst. and your hose is stored inside. When you get homet he whole underside of your car and usually your driveway is covered in a hard mixture od frozen slush and salt. You would have to lay in that mess for a long time after you hooked up your hose because cold water dissolves it very slowly and if it is co;d enough, just adds to it. When you were done you would have a driveway you would not be able to stand up on.
The town where I live has made it illegal to put a floor drain in your garage because they don’t want all that salt going to the water treatment plant.
You can go to a car wash and add underbody spray but they all recycle their water and only use fresh water for the final rinse and by the time you drive home, the under side of the car is going to be covered by salt again. Even if it has been warmer and snow free for a few days, all the snow piles along side the roads are leaking salt water onto the street you are driving on. Even the snow piles along side your driveway do that.
When I was going to work every day I put layers of newspaper over the carpet in the fron seats with rubber mats over that and changed the papers periodically. Still, in the spring I had to flood the front floor pans with a hose and keep extracting it with a shop vac to remove the hard crust of white salt from the carpets.
So in that case, a car in those regions may be doomed to a short life
The are between Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh is known as the rust belt for a number of reasons. Cars take a beating will all the salt put on the roads. Frequent day time temps above freezing and night time below freezing allows the salt/slush mixture to loosen up and penetrate even better.
Based on this tread and what I have learned in it, I went and inspected my friends 2006 Escape. Her’s is fine, but did apparently come from the factory with the extra “crossmember” fix. At least, she doesn’t remember it being added.
thank you, makes sense
I also disagree with washing the underbody weekly in the winter. A well made car should have good enough rust-proofing to handle salt for the life of the car.
I had a Passat that I kept for 11 years, never washed it, and it was fine, no rust except two small spots on the body, surface only.
So the consensus seems to be . . .
The Escape was a very poorly designed vehicle, as far as rust protection goes . . . ?
I live in Los Angeles, so I see plenty of older Escapes
But in other parts of the country, they must be crumbling away 
Washing car underbodies is controversial. I believe it forces water into cavities where it shouldn’t go and cannot vent/dry from. People I know who practice the practice have cars that seem to rot away faster than my cars. But I know there are those who swear by it, and I respect their choice… even though I disagree with it. To each his/her own.
But if you don’t get rid of those brines, then they’ll continue to wreak havoc, even after winter is over
I believe washing the underside forces those brines into places they cannot escape from.
Cars are designed to drain and vent. They aren’t designed to force water up from underneath. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
But if you do nothing, those brines are still going to wreak havoc
Am I missing something . . . ?!
Because it sounds as if the answer is two-fold
That Ford escape has lousy rust-prevention design, from the factory
Brines are going to mess up your life, no matter how you treat them
In the winter I use an oscillating lawn sprinkler on a hose and slowly drive over it to clean the under body. I also have a sprayer on a stick I use to flush certain areas that collect a lot of slush and salt.
It doesn’t seem to hurt anything.
I hate salt, or maybe just winter.
In the winter I always use the under carriage wash at the car wash. You have to get that slush off the bottom of the car in my opinion. Still I think if it were the lack of washing or washing, it would be affecting other cars also and not just the Escapes. So clearly there is something not right with the materials and/or design.
I hate salt, too and disliking winter more every year. It sounds like you’ve got a system that works for you, but it depends on what your definition of “winter” is.
You’d never catch me with a sprinkler or hooking up a hose here. My winters have days and even weeks with temperatures not climbing out of single digits and sometimes not reaching all the way up to zero.
The only good that comes with that is that even the salted roads re-freeze and the county stops applying salt because it actually makes the roads more slippery.
Oh, did I mention I hate salt?
CSA