Business First December 2017 December BF Digital | Page 72
MOTORING
All Grip Ford Kuga
ord has facelifted the Kuga for 2017.My
test car was the new sporty STLine trim.
This has lowered sports suspension and
loses any exterior chrome, swapping it for
black on the grille, window surrounds and
roof rails. You also get 18in dark machine
finished alloys. Inside, sports seats, steering
wheel, gear knob and the aluminum pedals
complete the spicedup look.
It does look sporty, it also looks quite tall.
To be precise, it’s the topspec 2.0litre diesel
with 178bhp. It comes only with fourwheel
drive, a choice of either a sixspeed manual
F
by Ian Beasant, BUSINESSFIRSTMAGAZINE
motoring correspondent
gearbox or a sixspeed dualclutch automatic.
Mine was fitted with the automatic gearbox,
although with paddles on the steering wheel
to change gear if you wanted.
I found that Drive mode or Sport mode was
plenty and worked well. Sport mode made the
Kuga that bit more eager and Drive was
perfect for a relaxing cruise
The whole setup is on the money in terms
of efficiency: 134g/km of CO2 emissions and a
claimed fuel economy of 54.3mpg are, give or
take, However, keep checking the
performance figures and you’ll discover that
the dash from 062mph in the Ford is 10.0sec
which is not that impressive compared
similar vehicles in this sector of the market.
The engine is a little bit noisy on startup,
once on the move it works really well with
gearbox. The Kuga is quite a large vehicle
when you look at it, when you drive it feels
agile and the suspension keeps body roll to a
minimum, the steering has worked on as it’s
nice and sharp.
The allwheel drive system is a great idea
and the Kuga does offer excellent grip levels.
There are other general updates to all 2017
Kuga’s. These include a front and rear
cosmetic refresh, with the new trapezoidal
grille also, and new head and tail lights. You
also get Ford’s updated Sync3 infotainment
system, an electronic parking brake and
gesture control for the poweropening
tailgate. There's more safety kit available, too,
with enhanced optional automatic emergency
city braking that works at speeds up to
31mph.
The interior is well laid out offering plenty
of room for passengers, storage and luggage.
The elevated driving position feels a little to
straight up for a sports model but does offer
excellent allround vison.
At nearly £32,000, I would really have
expected the interior to be of better quality
and more modern.
2017 Hyundai i30
H
yundai have designed and developed
their new i30 which is a midrange 5
door hatchback in Europe. They have
done this simply for the European market
and maybe to try and compete with the
major European manufactures. They can
compete or even do better than Volkswagen
with their 3 year unlimited mileage
warranty; when it comes to the car itself,
well I am not so sure.
I drove the i30 SE Nav model, which was
had a high specification, Satellite Navigation,
Dab Radio a host of safety features which
included Autonomous Emergency Braking,
which tells by alarms if you are getting to
close to another vehicle and will apply the
brakes if the car thinks you are going to have
a collision I personally didn’t actually try it.
The i30 comes with a variety of petrol and
diesel engines, my test car came with the
120 BHP 3 cylinders turbocharged 1.0 litre
petrol engine, which attached to a manual
sixspeed gearbox felt quite sprightly for the
size of car it was pulling. It takes 11 second s
to get 60mph but on the flip side it sips
petrol and I was able to easily achieve 55
miles per gallon.
Under the skin is new rigid chassis that
70 www.businessfirstonline.co.uk
Hyundai claims offers a compliant ride and
more involved handling over the previous
i30 model. It feels quite taught around the
city and softens up on the motorway. The
steering is quite vague and really didn’t do a
lot to inspire the driving experience.
On the motorway where the road is
smooth and straight the i30 is amazingly
quiet and comfortable. I felt it was not as
happy on our broken potholed roads; this is
probably as it was developed on the smooth
European roads.
The interior is fine, it does all you would
expect from a five door family hatchback
,The quality of the materials is okay but
nothing to shout about although the i30 does
feel well put together. The front seats are
comfortable and the cabin is spacious
enough to carry the driver and four
passengers; the boot is generous. It really is
not a bad car at all it is just so similar to lots
of other 5 door family hatchbacks.