T
he thing about the new Ford EcoSport range is that it breaks away from what many other manufacturers of the growing selection of urban
In essence, the idea was to make a car that offers the lifestyle components that SUVs have become popular for (either in fact, or in the imaginations and desires of its owners), with the practical realities of urban motoring today in which driving a behemoth is neither sensible nor, for an increasingly larger number of people, affordable. In all, the new range from this manufacturer offers three engines and three trim options to ensure a comprehensive offering for its customers. With the new range going on sale as of the beginning of August it remains to be seen what its uptake is in the local market, but if international trends are anything to go by, it should be a thumping success. And certainly our recent drive in all the vehicles in the range seems to underline the fact that the folks at Ford have done a lot of
SUVs and compact SUVs are doing, which in layman's
terms might be termed 'going for the urban-agro look'. Urban-agro, for those who haven't come across the term previously, is that currently in-vogue combo of sleek wedge-like modelling with muscle-car styling. Next time you see an SUV that fits the desc ription just given, you'll know immediately what the term means. Ford have used South American designers to come up with the look for this new range of compact SUVs – and the fact that they have not meekly followed the rest of the pack down the 'this is what urban motorists currently want so we'll do what everyone else is doing' path shows
guts and insight. Shortly, the heavy-on-gas SUV muscle cars are likely to be increasingly falling out of favour with their high CO2 outputs (mostly) and relatively poor fuel consumption. To be clear, most of the latest SUV type offerings from manufacturers are far less in the way of being fuel guzzlers than their predecessors. But that still doesn't make them fuel-sipping paragons of modern urban driving either. So Ford's new compact SUVs offer both the versatility of an SUV but with small-car fuel-efficiency. In respect to the latter aspect – using a smaller but more efficient 'conventional' internal combustion engine without a hybrid add-on – Ford is among leaders in the motor manufacturing field who've seen the future and what it demands from urban mobility solutions. In addition to the above-mentioned aspect, numerous smart features make EcoSport an attractive proposition, especially for the young, upwardly-mobile urban professional, which is more or less its target market.
work to get the mix of lifestyle SUV elements with urban mobility imperatives just right. Some might grumble a bit about the use of the 'EcoSport' name, given that there's nothing especially 'eco' about it in respect to a knee-jerk reaction to that descriptor. It's not a hybrid or exotically-powered vehicle. But it is very fuel-efficient. And the 1? model uses a l 1000cc engine that has the equivalent output of a 16? l engine of just a couple of years back. Now that's progress in anyone's book. Combine that with outstanding drag co-efficient of 0.371, and one can see that this offering isn't a mere cosmetic reworking of an existing model – and that the 'eco' label in the name is earned by contraction of the word 'economy' as opposed to 'ecological', but equally that the notion of the new vehicle being less impactful in terms of emissions and fuel-efficiency is therefore deserving of the 'eco' tag. In short, this is an on-the-showroom-floor version of the sort of motoring solutions which a growing number
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