Late 2011 was looking in the market to change my Fiat Palio. I was looking for a good petrol engine mated with manual transmission with good practical car probably a hatch back or medium sized SUV/MPV. At that time I was limited with very little options.
Honda Jazz and CRV were the only two options available.
Then immediately heard somewhere that Ford is going to showcase it’s small SUV in Delhi Expo. So thought of waiting for it to launch. (At that time I was thinking that the launch also will happen soon). When it was showcased, the mind murmured that this was the car I should be going for, especially after seeing the EcoBoost specifications.
And the wait started, initially the rumours said that the car would launch in the second half of 2012 itself. And to believe that the rumours would be correct Ford officially announced that in Brazil EcoSport would be launching in the beginning of second half. And the story continued. Waited till Jun 2013 and there was a clear-cut news that it would launch in June.
Booking Experience
Booking started on 13th June officially and promptly the showroom people took my booking on the same day itself (Ecoboost tiitanum optional). Even to my surprise they had a catalogue of accessories as well. My booking number was 1. I was little bit confused about color, so confirmed blue color only on the next day. According to them I should be able to get the towards end of July. So then the waiting started for owning one of the most awaited car in India.
When it was July , the promised delivery date moved to August and multiple times in August and then to September and to October. When it was October, I felt really irritated as I could see lot of cars in my office itself and they booked after me. So I started looking for other alternatives as well. In petrol engine option I had only one option that was CRV and was very expensive and compared to the features that Ecosport has, you can’t compare at all. After exploring with all the dealers in Hyderabad for CRV, could find out that there was a Manual CRV available ready for delivery. In the meantime had a word with Tata customer care service for enquiring for Aria. (As I didn’t have any other option in Petrol, so thought of checking Aria as well). As I expect the response was really bad from Tata. Somebody promised to call me and no-one called and I had to again call the customer care to get an answer.
In the mean time I got a mail from Ford customer care on 9th October that my car is allotted and it should reach the dealership by mid of October. On 22nd October got the confirmation from dealership that the car reached in the stockyard. I went for the PDI on the same day . The D-day arrived and that was 24th of October (Incidentally this is on the same day exactly 9 years back I got my Fusion).
Below are the list of accessories that I took.
ESSENTIALPACK ECO SPORT
PROTECTION PACK ECO SPORT (Without Slimline Weathershield)
CAR COVER ECO SPORT
NECK REST
3D Trunk Tray
Bumber Applique (Front & Rear)
INTERIOR LIGHT (Interior Ambient Light)
Sport pedal covers
TMP for 3 years/45,000 KM
Body protection
Cross Bar
Bonnet Protector / Bug Deflector
Individual Pack
These are the ones which I took from showroom.
From outside I have taken
Hertz tweeters (
http://www.hertzaudiovideo.com%2FDoc...DT_24_tech.pdf ) This was referred by fellow bhp’an @ecoport_rules.
What Accessories you should go for Illuminated Scuff plates – It really protects the paint and the illumination in the night looking really good. As this car is a high standing car the chances of scratches you get on the door area is high. If this scuff plates, if it could have been much wider and longer then it could have been much better. For rear door, I have already placed an order to get transparent scratch guard. (This can be put on the rear wheel cover, rear-view mirrors as well because the chances of getting scratches are higher)
Ambient light – It gives you a visibility under the seats as well as the corners. Plus it gives the same blue lighting as there in the instrument cluster.
Sport pedal covers – It improves the grip.
Rear view Camera – As the rear glass is small and positioned very high, rear view camera will ease your pain of reversing. A downside of the screen is that during bright daylight because of reflection, it is not very easy to see the images in the screen.
What accessories you should not go for Rear Spoiler – With its position it is quite evident that It doesn’t add any extra air deflection. Secondly for fitting this they drill the rear door and this can damage your door as well. So I will not recommend.
Head light protector – It makes a space between headlamp and the cover and during rainy times it creates a fog on the cover and reduces the headlight effectiveness. Secondly during running of the car this comes off from the position as this is fitted with a flexible fitting to clean the head lamp.
Front Mud flaps – The company provided mud flap doesn’t stop the muds coming in to the body. The mud flaps are too small and their design is in such a way that it’s width is lesser towards the bottom. I recommend to see aftermarket mudflaps are better. I am going to check next week and will update the thread as well.
The real driving experience
I have covered almost 1500 KM as of today. Fully city drive.
Once you get in to the drivers' seat you feel that you are not sitting in a hatch back /sedan. This is a true SUV, thanks to the tall driving position. But once the vehicle starts move in, you get a feeling that you are driving small car. To provide this feeling you have electronic power steering , very light clutch, very easy gear shifting. (Now as the car is new, in cold starts you can feel a little bit friction when you are putting it to second gear from first gear or vice versa. ). The gears are very tall, especially till 3rd gear and it makes your driving experience tough especially in city roads. I felt that hand rest are designed in a good position and it really helps you to rest your hands. (For your right hand, you can use the hand rest on the door). The ergonomics of the car is superb, other than placement of hand brake, dead pedal size and legs are hitting the steering spindle. For taking the reverse, the rear visibility is very poor, first the rear wind shield is very small, so I really recommend a rear camera. Another thing I felt is that because of the bigger turning radius, the parking in smaller area is tough. (even though, the size of the car is not that as big you feel when you park). Now coming to the ride and handling, in slow speed, the potholes really disturb you. (Yes you really feel it ), but if you go over the same potholes in high speeds, they get absorbed without any issues. (This was the same thing I observed on my Fusion also, does this imply that engineers who designed Fusion are part of this design as well ). Handling is really good, you never feel like you are driving a tall car. I would say that handling is better than some of the hatchbacks and sedans as well.
Interiors.
The interiors are designed with very much talent and good calculation at hand. Even though it carries on the interior design of New Fiesta , but the bluish shade itself of the entire dash (The backlit) will welcome you with a good smile. Because of this brighter color, all the texts are easily readable on the digital display (both on instrument cluster as well as on multi information display. The cabin has lot of storage spaces, and are countless, but I am listing some here, a bottle holder and wider door pockets on each of the front doors, (One down side is that the front door packets are not completely closed, it opens towards front, For me it looks like a negative for me), Two cup holders just behind the gear level, one deep cup holder between front seats, some storage area between dash and gear lever, another storage area besides hand brake, card holder just above the Microsoft Sync badge and it goes on. The glove box also designed neatly with two area with lots of space. Coming to the back storage, you get a small rear pocket on the front passenger seat and the driver seat. The bottle holders are there in the rear doors as well. The bottle holders are small, in my classic Fiesta I can easily pack a 2 litre bottle on the front door bottle holders.
The 3 way front interior lights are good for practical purpose. For instance, the front passenger can switch on the left side light, without affecting much visibility for the driver in the night. The rear lamp is placed at a position which I feel could have been better if it could have provided on both sides. For improving the under dash visibility I installed ambient light as an accessory and I recommend to others as well.
All the controls have illuminated very well to easily operated in night, except the phone controls on the steering. The front power window switches I feel is placed a little bit front, The position of front power windows should be ergonomically correct if they could have placed the it in the position of the rear power widows switches. Now you need to drag your hand a little bit front to get access to the front power windows switches. Secondly an auto down and up switch for the passenger windows also could have been an icing on the cake for this car with all these features. The Seat adjustment controls are surprisingly light including the rear seats reclining. The rear parcel tray removal also designed wonderfully. It operates like a retractor and I feel nicely though feature. On the flip side, in order give way to this feature, it brought in gaps on the parcel tray and it makes your small items to fall on to the boot. The inside handles for passengers are solely missed out and that is a must to have especially for elderly people (And for Kids as well). Hope Ford will think of an alternatives in the next versions. Even if we could have able to fit the side running boards (the steps), then also this would not have felt this badly. Owing to the curtain airbags we are not recommended to fit side running boards as well. When I saw a car with side running boards, I felt it gives a better side view to the car as well. From a technology perspective I loved the central locking switch on the console, but I think it would have been better to give individual locking and unlocking provision to be given to individual doors.
With the dark tone interiors along with small rear windows, the roomy feeling is going away and the rear bench looks very small. 3 well built persons will have problems sitting comfortably in the rear. But a 2 6+ footers of 80+ KG and a 5.5 feet of 65 KG person could seat comfortably in the back. All of them were getting enough shoulder room as well. The only complaint was with respect to under thigh support.
Exteriors.
personally I don't like that front design distribution. A big open mouth, and a small grill with a non-matching sized headlamp. (I felt the size of the headlamp is small compared to the front size). And this is the other reason I went for bug deflector as well. It prevents the small grill to project up. (The major reason for going for a bug deflector was in the past, when I drive in late evening or early morning on highways, In every 20-30 minutes I had to stop and clean windshield with news paper to clean out the flies ).
The doors are really heavy and for kids it's very difficult to open and close. The boot door, it is very difficult for adults to control if we open the door in a slanting position. The hydraulic control I felt could have been made mode effective. The front wipers washes the clean very smoothly and cleanly. The front washer is really impressive with its spraying to the glass. The water gets evenly distributed all over the glass and it improves the cleanliness of the glass compared to conventional injector type washer.
The wheel Arches (both front and rear) are not designed to project out compared to what we see in the conventional SUV. Some of my friends didn't like this normal car like design.
The outside rear view mirrors are placed very much outside to the body and it is attracting the reckless driving from two wheelers and autos in Hyderabad.
Now coming back to the rear, the material used (kind of fibre) between rear windshield and C Pillar are very sensitive to scratches and it becomes visible very easily.
In the body parts I could see some uneven panel level difference as well. For instance in when you close the front doors it comes doesn't math in the level with the rear door. The front door comes little bit outwards even after closing fully.
Driving Experience with High Octane Petrol
As the owners manual suggest 95 octane petrol, I had a conversation with technical folks of Ford about the usage of Petrol. They said that the car is certified for 91 octane petrol, but if we want more performance, we can go for either 95/97 petrol. so I was searching for a high octane petrol pump in Hyderabad. Finally got to know that near to Gachibowli (When you are going from Gachibowli to Mehdipatnam, cross Raidurgam police station signal and take the first U turn and it is immediately on to your left) there is a Bhatrath petrol pump. So thought of putting the 4th tankful from there. The price is way high 102 rupees for one litre compared to normal petrol of 77. But after putting this petrol the engine is really smooth. The knocking of the engine has come down drastically. I would recommend for all the EcoBoost owners to try this at least once on a tankful. At least the MID is showing a 10-15% increase in mileage also with this petrol.
What I liked. - Tall driving position
- 6 way driver seat adjustments.
- Two way adjustable telescoping steering column.
- Feeling very difficult to control the speed under 80 in 5th gear or keep the RPM under 2000 in all the gears. The engine is really peppy and the pick-up once the turbo kicks in is amazing.
- Lot of leg room in rear as well as front
- Reclining rear seats.
- Reclining of front seats are also very easy. The adjustment lever is very light and can be adjusted without any stress
- Sync works perfectly fine when you get a message or incoming call answered. The voice clarity and the mic quality is awesome. When people speak from the rear seat, the audibility is looking good.
- Rear Sensors are very accurate and really helpful for rear-side obstacles as well. It easily detects rear corners as well (I meant to say not just absolute rear side, but the rear left and right side as well it covers brilliantly)
- Very powerful breaks.
- The auto folding boot parcel tray is a good feature. There is a downside also, as it is like a plastic sheet, I think it can’t carry even a 1 KG material.
- The front washer is really effective. It really sprays the water like a shower all over the glass, rather than the conventional sprinkler type nozzle.
What could have been better. - Turning radius. (Feeling the pinch when I am making it to park compared to Fiesta )
- The handbrake level positioned in an awkward position. Seems like it is being designed for Left hand drive car. It is taking time to adjust to this one). If you push the seat all the way front then the seat belt holder literally blocks your hand in operating the hand brake. Very basic design flaw
- The phone buttons on the steering wheels are not illuminated. So during night for the initial days it is difficult take the call and disconnect the calls.
- Climate control A/C recirculation settings is not being sustained if you switch off the control and on it again.
- The boot door is too difficult to control if the car is parked in a slanting surface.
- Mileage is hovering around 10 only in city traffic. I expected it to be around 12. In the last tankful’s mileage were 8.7, 9.5, 10.2 and 10.6 respectively.
- The light switch for the vanity mirror looks very flimsy ..
- The lumbar support adjustment rotatory switch for driver’s seat doesn’t look upmarket.
- My leg always touches the steering road, when I press clutch.
- The dead pedal is too small to use.
- The headlight switches get switched n automatically so many times when you get in or get out by touching your knees.
- The lower gears (Up to 3rd gear), are very long. For instance, under 20 KMPH, it is very difficult to drive in 2nd gear, you are forced to go to first gear. And this could be the reason for less mileage as well.
- Front seats are not as comfortable as the new Fiesta. It could be the reason that, the leather seats are harder in EcoSport.
- Sync with voice commands for making the calls, my success % is around 20% in making a call using voice commands. (It could be because of my accent as well
- Outside rear view mirrors are spreading out of the body very much and erratic two wheelers and 3 wheelers will hit them for sure ..
- Warning sounds for doors are not closed properly/ the info stays on MID till we close the door. Now this info comes and goes off in some time. One option is to have the warning sound that is there for hand brake disengagement or keep staying this warning till we close the door on MID itself
Overall I felt that at this price point this is really value for money plus the engine is really good. At any point of time you never feel that this is 1.0 litre engine.
Once I finish 2500 Km and after the first service will take it for a highway drive and will update the details as well.
attaching some of the photos as well