Toyota Fortune-Her: A ride for the wife & maybe for life!

[nilanjanray]

Congratulations Amol. Ride comfort and drum brakes are my two pet peeves about the vehicle. But otherwise it grows on you fast.

White is conspicuous for wildlife shooting drives in the forests :-)

[Guderian]

Hi Amol,
Congratulations !
Gladdens the heart to see the Fortuner tribe grow.

Wishing you a wonderful time with the new acquisition & many a thousand safe miles in it.
Looking forward to regular updates on this thread.

[avisidhu]

Great review Amol. It's always nice to see someone post his perspective in such an objective manner.

I haven't been in a Fortuner, but was surprised when a friend of mine too mentioned that he found the middle seat in Fortuner quite uncomfortable as compared to the Safari. I was taken aback by his statement since the TFort looks relatively more imposing externally, so it's naturally assumed that space and comfort inside should be equally good, if not better. And he was emphasising on space more than ride quality as such, since he travelled on the Taj expressway.

The fuss free and niggle free ownership combined with much better service levels would most likely lead to a better appreciation of the Tfort with time I believe. All the best and keep us updated, I for one would be looking forward to more comparision with the Safari on various aspects going forward.

[sandeepmohan]

Really well documented experience about your cars and how you went about buying your new Toyota.

Frankly; I hate Fortuner owners. They are nothing but bullies on the road. The Karnataka government owns quite a few of these beasts and all of them are driven by lunatics. I got scrubbed by one too (not a government car) and for no reason at all. The dude just got too close to me. I was lucky that the contact was with with his front bumper and my rear fender so the scratches are minor and there was no dent. It was not possible to deal with the situation as I would be holding up traffic. When my wife got out of the car to check for damages, she looked at the driver and it was a personal driven car. The driver acknowledged the incident with a laugh and that really ticked me off. I just could not deal with the problem at the time so left the spot. Clearly; you are not one of these drivers.

The Fortuner is without doubt the most reliable and capable out of the box SUV you can buy. Going by your observations, it is not perfect. However; the reliability aspect alone is enough that it far out weighs the short comings of the product. It is so good. Not for nothing that it commands a premium and on top of that, there is still a waiting period for it. There is nothing that looks as butch and menacing too.

From a TATA, the Toyota should feel from another planet.

Considering your wife is going to be behind the wheel of the Toyota, why did you not consider the automatic variant? From your Ford Endeavor test drive, you seemed to like the convenience of an auto box.

The primary reason for not feeling that surge in power is probably due to the weight of the Fortuner. For a 3l, the numbers could have been a lot better too. The torque output is quite poor considering TATA and Mahindra manage almost the same amount of torque from a smaller engine. This should not be a matter of concern. You don't buy a Fortuner for speed. It isn't built for speed. There are a lot of other things going for it. Personally; I find the Ford 3l in the Endeavor a more fun engine.

Skipping disc brakes at the rear is not good on Toyota's part. The first lot of Fortuner's suffered from poor braking too. Sure, there are capable drum disc setups but you just can't compare them to a well designed all disc setup. The stopping power for an all disc setup is in another league.

The gear stick tugging is simply unacceptable. This is very un Toyota from an engineering point of view.

[abirnale]

Congratulations Amol for the new arrival in your garage. Your buying and decision making write up helps a lot and tons of thanks for that. Especially when I am glued to Dr. Mohit's thread on TFort vs XUV and that is ultimate dilemma I will be in a year or so, your thread helps forming some understanding about the TFort and the closest competitors.

Congratulations again. And have a safe and fun drive.

[BIBIN004]

First of all Welcome to the family & a hearty congrats on your right selection .Wishing you more happy miles ahead and more snaps as well.

[dkaile]

Congratulations amolpol for joining the Fortuner gang. I liked your thought process in the selection of the vehicle. Quite genuine grievances and eventual decision.

Wishing you years of happiness and adventure with the Butcher...

[rugsrags]

Congratulations for the fortuner. Just a question though why didn't you check out the rexton. I think it's a worthwhile consideration and the ride definitely would have been much better. The off-roading capability in the manual rexton is also considered very good. After living with a Tata am sure a Mahindra would not be too bad and I doubt it to be as prone to niggles as a thar!!

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by k_nitin_r

The green display for the AC isn't a negative. If you get an integrated display like on the Lexus, when you start the car, there's a delay till you can operate the AC using the on-screen controls....

It's a functional display for sure, just that the green color is pretty archaic. I probably won't complain of it now given that the new music system has a matching theme for it.

Originally Posted by Utopian

Congratulation for the Fortuner. It is a bit out of the ordinary that your wifey is comfortable with it, generally it is the other way around.
I did not know that Fortuner was offered in two shades of white, peculiar. The hub caps seem to be missing from the snaps.

- My wife's been pretty comfy with the Safari and couldn't see herself driving a sedan or a hatchback again - we're a bit crazy that way!

- The hub caps were missing because those pictures were taken during initial PDI at the yard.

Originally Posted by nilanjanray

Congratulations Amol.

White is conspicuous for wildlife shooting drives in the forests :-)

Thanks Nilanjan. The choice of color was not really based on anything other than waiting periods. If a black was available I would have picked it up, but the 2 months waiting was getting on my nerves. Besides, I don't think I'll use it for shooting wildlife even on forest drive throughs. The smaller windows won't really offer the flexibility to use the 600mm like the way I'd do in the Safari.

Originally Posted by avisidhu

I haven't been in a Fortuner, but was surprised when a friend of mine too mentioned that he found the middle seat in Fortuner quite uncomfortable as compared to the Safari......

All the best and keep us updated, I for one would be looking forward to more comparision with the Safari on various aspects going forward.

My frame of reference for comparisons will always be with the Safari so you can expect more things to come up as I start acquainting myself with the Fortuner.

Your friend is right about his observations both in terms of space and comfort. Actually, at 1/3rd the price, the Safari offered unparalleled driving and passenger comfort which I've not experienced in any other SUV/MUV. Tatas are actually known for their seating comfort, I used to own an Indigo in the past and have been complimented quite a few times that it was a very comfortable car to ride in even though I couldn't say the same about driving that one.

A simple observation from today was the difference in gear ratios between the two.

• The Safari had a pretty much unusable first gear and most stop and go traffic could be done in the second gear itself. The third gear was awesome though and you could keep driving in moving traffic as if it was an automatic. The first gear was for nothing more than to move the car ahead for a few meters from a stationary position. The awesome torque curve made sure that I hardly needed to shift down to 1st gear even on steep ghat sections unless I stopped.
  
• The Fortuner on the other hand is more driveable in the city, the first gear is actually quite good with its range and overlaps with the 2nd gear of the Safari. The third gear of the Safari seems to be distributed over the 2nd and 3rd gear in the Fortuner. Though there's a significant gap in the desired torque vs actual considering a 3L engine - the linear delivery somewhat makes up for it.
  
• I'm guessing that the beyond 3rd gear story would be same/similar for both vehicles since the torque figures should be rationalized at higher speeds. Will get some highway experience soon, so will have more observations to make.
  

[kailashnj]

Congrats on your new beast Amol... Really happy to read your thread. It reminds me why you were part of the quality team.

When in Mumbai, lets catch up dude.

[abishek2222]

Congrats on the fort. Wishing you many more happy motoring miles.Your lucky that your wife shares your enthusiasm for SUVs

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Really well documented experience about your cars and how you went about buying your new Toyota.

Thanks Sandeep.

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Frankly; I hate Fortuner owners. They are nothing but bullies on the road.

Clearly; you are not one of these drivers.

When I read that first line I was thinking that it's going to be a ranting post about the breed of Fortuner or in general SUV owners. But turns out that you got some bad apple who was a firm believer that bigger car = bigger ego. Hopefully, that isn't the case with everyone and you'll still find SUV owners who stop for pedestrians to cross and let crazy bikers pass by because they're presumably in a hurry all the time.

People bullying around with an SUV is a common sentiment but realistically it's quite difficult to do it because of the poor maneuverability of these big cars in traffic situations. I'm not defending anyone here, there are still some maniacs who're out there driving a 2-tonne truck as if it were a Maruti 800, but the majority of owners would be careful to avoid bumping into someone. I for one wouldn't want to do it simply because of the risk of damaging my own car and for the fact that the bigger car is anyways blamed by default in an accident - so it's always best to not be involved in one. The imposing stance of some cars does make people give way at times, especially on U-turns or junction crossings but it's not really that the owner wants to trample everything in his/her path. And all the above holds true even when I'm driving the Thar which is virtually indestructible in city driving conditions and can inflict a lot of damage to others without even getting a scratch on it.

If we ever get a chance to meet, I'll make sure to display the best of my behavior to help reinstate at least some of the lost faith in SUV drivers.

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

From a TATA, the Toyota should feel from another planet.

Considering your wife is going to be behind the wheel of the Toyota, why did you not consider the automatic variant? From your Ford Endeavor test drive, you seemed to like the convenience of an auto box.

The Endy was indeed comfortable to drive with the auto box, but both of us are big fans of manual transmissions. While we both agreed that the automatic would make life easier and it'll bring in some refinement in our otherwise crude lives, we weren't jumping with joy. The reason is both of us love the control that a manual transmission provides and foregoing that was a matter of great difficulty but we had made peace with it considering the other positives of the Endy and the fact that I would have got a tuning box for it to make it more peppy to drive.

With the Fortuner, we didn't really have a choice of looking at the automatic since there was no 4x4 offered with it. That was a must have on the new car.

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Personally; I find the Ford 3l in the Endeavor a more fun engine.

From a torque standpoint, yes i agree. The Endy did seem like a more peppy drive than the Fortuner. However, the gear shifts were a bit slower than what I would have liked and the Fortuner wins in that aspect because of the MT. I've not driven the auto box on the Fortuner to comment how both the autoboxes compare since that would be a more fairer comparison.

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Skipping disc brakes at the rear is not good on Toyota's part.
The gear stick tugging is simply unacceptable. This is very un Toyota from an engineering point of view.

The brakes are not bad, but yes discs would have give it some more bite. And the gear stick movement, the lesser said is better. So far its the biggest irritant in the car, hopefully I'll make peace with it soon.

Originally Posted by abirnale

Congratulations Amol for the new arrival in your garage. Your buying and decision making write up helps a lot and tons of thanks for that. Especially when I am glued to Dr. Mohit's thread on TFort vs XUV and that is ultimate dilemma I will be in a year or so, your thread helps forming some understanding about the TFort and the closest competitors.

Congratulations again. And have a safe and fun drive.

Thanks Abirnale. I did TD the XUV 500 for a friend of mine who wanted my opinion on it. Honestly, that car surprises you on what Mahindra has managed to put together in terms of the overall product. What dejects you though is the longevity of what is being offered as features which fail to work at times. The ride is more like a car than an SUV and it's a true crossover in that sense. The GC is terribly disappointing though and even the AWD won't do much good with that kind of clearance.

Good luck with your decision making process, I'm so relieved I won't have to do any of that for a few years now.

[Enigmatic]

This has to be one of the better reviews on team-bhp.

Firstly congratulations on acquiring the fortuner. Its a beautiful machine and the bumpy ride will grow on you .

However the endeavour part literally made me sad. I am amongst the few people who believe an endeavour is a better product than the fortuner..

None the less, I wish things go awesome for you and you are able to pick up the endeavour as well.

[amolpol]

Originally Posted by rugsrags

Congratulations for the fortuner. Just a question though why didn't you check out the rexton. I think it's a worthwhile consideration and the ride definitely would have been much better. The off-roading capability in the manual rexton is also considered very good. After living with a Tata am sure a Mahindra would not be too bad and I doubt it to be as prone to niggles as a thar!!

We did consider the Rexton at one point in time and wanted to check it out before discarding that option. Sadly, we couldn't get a TD since the car had gone out for some event when we visited the showroom and the SA didn't bother reverting back even though we left our contact details to send the car for a test drive later in the week.

A few things that weren't in favor of the Rexton were:

- The manual transmission variant was a very bare-basic stripped down version vs the automatic which had all the bells and whistles. Automatics weren't our first choice!
- Inside space was smaller than what we would have liked, this wasn't a deal breaker but still a considerable factor
- Even though it's serviced by Mahindra, the service/repair expertise isn't available everywhere and that was an issue.
- The automatic AWD mode wasn't really what I wanted - this was the biggest negative for it since I wanted a selectable 4x4 mode.
- This could have been the closest I'd come to driving the German tri-star since it's mostly a ML270 under the Ssangyong badge, but my discussions with the service folks revealed that it wasn't a 100% tension-free product as of now and needed some more mutation to adapt to the Indian conditions. Reliability wasn't something that I'd want to compromise in a new car.
- As with any Tata or Mahindra, it's always best to give them the first 3-5 years to settle down with the product quality issues before giving them your money and let them play with your mind.
- Even after that settling in period, you need to find new ways of beating the stress and anxiety while working with the ASCs. With the Thar already in the parking, I didn't want to ask for double trouble with Mahindra.

Originally Posted by kailashnj

Congrats on your new beast Amol... Really happy to read your thread. It reminds me why you were part of the quality team.

When in Mumbai, lets catch up dude.

Thanks Kailash. I'll be in Mumbai next week but have a really packed family agenda. Will keep you posted if we can find some time to catch up in between all the chaos.

Originally Posted by abishek2222

Congrats on the fort. Wishing you many more happy motoring miles.Your lucky that your wife shares your enthusiasm for SUVs

Thanks Abishek. You're damn right about me being lucky. Life would have been really tough if she weren't an adventure seeker too.

[amolpol]

The one thing that’s been haunting my wife and myself has been the music system. We just couldn’t come to terms with the stock system and wanted to get it changed asap. So in spite of the quiet period that we’re observing for the car, we decided that today was a good opportunity to visit Autoshop and get the surgery done since we’re going to be out for the next two weekends.



I had the following things already carried over from the Safari with me:

• Blaupunkt GTA475 4-channel amplifier
• JBL 3501 Mono Amp
• Infinity Kappa Components 62.7i (front doors)
• Infinity Kappa 2-way speakers 62.9i (rear doors)

As usual we started with the option of adding the amplifiers to the stock system to save on money. Now, the stock system was definitely not the best, but it did have all the basic things you need and we wanted to see if there’s any way amplifiers could make it sound better. A Scosche hi-lo converter could be added to the stock setup to and transfer speaker outputs to the 4-ch amplifier. While this was the cheapest option, we could possibly use only one 4-channel amp and not the mono amp. This would also mean bridging of two channels to feed the subwoofer and hence we’d also lose the independent controls for the front, rear and sub. I’ve used a bridged channel setup once before with a Pioneer HU which had built in pre-outs and was never really happy with it. The improvement in sound quality in the Safari with two separate amps was tremendous. There was no point in going back in time and learning the same lessons!

I had already done some homework on which system to install if needed. It had to be the 8590BT with all the latest features including AppRadio and three 4V pre-outs. The only cruel thing about this HU is the cost, at about 29k you couldn’t really say it was affordable. But then once the AppRadio features are enabled, I guess it will pay you back on savings for navigation modules etc. With that in mind, we decided to go with it and not really settle in for any other brand or model. Also, even though this one is a DVD touch screen, it did look like it was more focused on delivering high quality audio performance which is what I needed. Honestly, the DVD playback is rarely going to be used, unless we get some headrest monitors etc which isn’t happening anytime soon.


Image Courtesy: Pioneer India

Anyways, coming back to the story.

• The 8590BT was chosen to replace the stock system.
• A steering interface was to be installed to revive the volume and track change controls on the steering wheel. We’d lose functionality on the call connect/disconnect buttons though. I wasn't going to do this initially but this was a demand by the missus and there was no override available
• There wasn’t enough place for a 12” sub enclosure once the last row seats were reclined for comfortable seating. So the decision was to install a 10” sealed box GroundZero subwoofer which came in highly recommended by Kumar from Autoshop.
• The compos were taken care of already and so were the two amplifiers
• Wiring was going to be GroundZero which looked pretty okay to me at least
• The 4 doors were going to get some serious damping
• The Pioneer HU had an input for rear camera but the stock camera had some other type of connection and needed another converter to work with the HU. So one more item got added to the list.
• The system needed to be fitted with an adapter to eliminate any panel gaps on the dash, this was nothing but a small plastic insert that fills the gap. Having it doesn't make the system look amazing, but it's absence would have made the install look a bit ugly for sure.

With all of this finalized, work began at about 12PM and it was estimated to go on till 6PM.

The door panels were stripped down…



Front seats were removed…



Dashboard panels were opened up …



Stock system was removed – second picture shows the rear connections whereas the first picture shows the model number information.



Steering control adapter was added…



The 100gm plastic speakers were taken out….



And yes, you read it right! The stock speakers are nothing but a joke. With an all plastic construction, they weigh not more than 100g each with a puny 20W rated output. Not sure what Toyota was thinking when they chose to install these in a 30L car.

While they were busy with the ICE installation, I also noticed the scooter horns provided as stock. Asked them to change them to Hella Red Grills which do duty on my Thar as well. I didn’t want the wind tone horns even though they sound really nice, reason being, they’re prone to water damage. I’ve already broken on set on the Thar and didn’t want to go that way ever.

End of the day, it was the moment of truth and the bill was enough to make us decide that today’s dinner will be a quiet family affair at home instead of the usual dinner options.

Quick Review:

• The 8590BT is loaded with features, some are functional and some cosmetic, but nothing is useless for sure
• The door damping has made a big effect on the lower frequency notes. The Infinity Kappas sound so much better even without the sub-woofer. This was never the case in the Safari where they served me for the past 3 years. In the Safari, the moment the subwoofer was turned off, a good part of the sound spectrum was noticeably lost whereas now it's much richer.
• The GroundZero subwoofer sounds quite good, it still has to be broken in but even now it’s quite powerful for the size.
• The sound stage is no longer front heavy – this was a common complaint with the Safari. I tested the sound in the middle row seat and it felt fairly balanced. The last row is definitely a big deprived because there are no speaker beyond the rear doors. The subwoofer is what fills the sound at the rearmost seat, not sure if there’s a way to put some more speakers at the back.
• Overall, my wife and I, both were happy with the output and concurred that this was definitely a “worth it” upgrade
• The green theme matches pretty neatly into the other green elements on the dash.

For now, the beast goes into slumber again until Saturday and we can get some of our favorite tracks compiled on an USB drive to listen through the 3000kms that it will cover in the next 10 days.

Unfortunately I forgot to click pictures of the finished setup, will have them up pretty soon.