the Bucket: TDCi

This week see's the launch of the all new Ford Fiesta in South Africa, a car which played a big part in forcing the trend of the compact hatchback in the country. Over the years it's grown in size and become quite a great looking car, and this new variant is spot on in terms of styling and interior design. While we may not be attending the launch, we are hopeful of receiving one to test in the not to distant future but for now lets take a look at what Ford tells about this all new Fiesta.

As mentioned before, new styling, Ford say the new design follows an evolution of the old which is very evident but they also made it more contemporary but just a bit so much not to lose its "Fiesta-ness". After all, Fiesta does mean festive, if the car looked boring they should change its name to "Siesta"....okay enough of the dry jokes from me. They have managed to make the car look more elegant with the bold styling, silver finishes and the nice LED loop the front headlights make. It definitely looks more mature than the outgoing model. The car has also grown a lot with an additional 71 mm in length and 13 mm in width. Ford says this gives the car a more premium appearance but for me, that just means more cabin space which is a major plus for a big guy like myself.

Moving under the hood, Ford retains its multi award winning 1.0L Ecoboost petrol engine in the Feista line up, I mean if the engine won the "International Engine of the Year" award 6 times, why change it. The car is available in both 6 speed manual and automatic, with the latter having a conventional six-speed torque converter transmission. The Ecoboost engine produces 74kW of power and 170Nm of torque. More than enough to run around town with. If you prefer a diesel engine, Ford have their 1.5L TDCi turbodiesel engine and is exclusively available with a six-speed manual gearbox producing 63kW and 174Nm of torque. The Fiesta now also features stop/start technology, further enhancing it's fuel efficiency.

Getting into the Fiesta, while you must take into consideration this isn't a luxury car so don't expect plush interiors to match the exterior, while I say that, Ford have done a relatively good job. The materials look solid and nothing cheap about it, the driver set-up looks great an the new large infotainment touch screen which has SYNC3 loaded on is perfect. SYNC3 also integrates with your mobile device so if you have Apple Car Play or Android Auto, everything gets displayed via the cars screen, rather than you having to check your phone all the time which adds to the safety of the you and your passengers.

Overall, Ford look to have a great car hitting their showrooms, while many are used to having cars like this for students and so on, with the ever increasing price of petrol, which is said to go over the R15 a litre mark in June, a car like the Fiesta could be for anyone that wants to save on their trip to the petrol station. It has all the creature comforts, looks great and is pretty nippy. If you wanting something a bit faster, the Fiesta ST is due sometime during this year but Ford SA won't giving a date as yet, so watch this space.

Pricing for the Fiesta range is as follows.

Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost Trend 6MT	R261,900
Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost Trend 6AT	R277,300
Fiesta 1.5 TDCi Trend 6MT	R292,500
Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost Titanium 6MT	R295,500
Fiesta 1.0 EcoBoost Titanium 6AT	R310,600

When Ford launched their Everest in SA about 2 years ago, it wasn't going to take the market by storm, not because it isn't a good vehicle, but because of its price tag. The launch edition only featured the 3.2 Diesel engine, whilst it is a great engine it did make the SUV damn expensive! So it was with great joy to many when Ford launched the 2.2 variants late last year. While you still get the great vehicle, but with a power train that is smaller but still capable to lug this rather large car around. A few weeks back I spent a week with the Ford Everest 2.2 AWD 4X4 and put it through some tests that I didn't even imagine I would had to! All in all it was great fun as you will soon find out.

STYLE

The model I had was the XLS 4WD which sits one below the XLT, it still had the great look of the Everest, and it was just accentuated with the Ocean Blue colour that it came with. You did miss those minor touches from the LTD that make it look the part though, for example, the daytime running LED lights on the front headlamps and the chromed out front grille and the larger rims, this one did come with 17" wheels but looked rather small on it. Other than that, the car still has a great presence on the road, I mean it is probably one of the biggest SUV's available on the market, size wise and in height. Interior was pretty plain but then with an entry level variant you wouldn't expect it to have everything in it.

PERFORMANCE

If anyone has seen or been in an Everest you will know how big this car is and why I keep mentioning it so with the smaller engine, I was a bit optimistic on how it would cope. Credit to the engineers at Ford though, the engine did deliver plenty in-terms of power and torque, the 6 speed manual transmission I had also played a part in this. Also with the 2,2 ltr diesel engine, I did notice a significant economy difference to the 3.2 engine, Ford claims it can do 7.1L per the 100km which I struggled to get near but then again I was to blame for that, it was just so much fun testing the torque on take off all the time!

COMFORT

The Everest is a full 7 seater SUV, and its capable of carrying 7 adults more than comfortably, yes we put this to the test but bare in mind when using all 7 seats it doesn't leave much boot space. The versatility of the Everest is just great, the seats are so easy to move and drop that even a child could do them. You can have them set up in multiple configurations to suit you. Even if you have to carry an extra large item, just fold down all the seats and be amazed at how much can actually fit inside this behemoth. The cabin air is controlled by climate control and has vents throughout the cabin with the option to switch off the rear cabin AC if there is no one there.

OFF ROADING

Whats the point in having a 4X4 if you aren't going to take it off roading right? Well that was my point exactly with the Everest, while it did a great job on my daily commute to work and back, scaring taxi's and other idiot drivers off the fast lane on the highway, it was off track where I really wanted to experience it. That weekend, some of the first snow falls were reported in the Southern end of Drakensberg and Lesotho, it was the perfect opportunity to go looking for snow with the Everest. I rang up a few mates, and we were off early Saturday morning, on the road to find the snow. We had a snow tracker, scouring the internet to see where snow sightings were, most of which were deep in Lesotho which was a bit far for our liking but the closest area with reported snow fall was Sani Pass. A route we conquered many a time in the past, so off we went!

As we got closer, we could definitely feel the snow was not too far off with the temperature dropping from 11 degrees to 3 degrees in a matter of kilometers. We didn't have our passports with us so we couldn't actually head up the pass but thought we would drive to the border and see what we could find. The short gravel road to the border is only 13 km or so but it normally is a hard gravel road that isn't as easy as it sounds. Much to our bad luck as we began our trek on this road, it began to bucket down, making the gravel turn into thick mud, almost clay which saw a number of vehicles in front of us get bogged down, eventually forcing us to turn around. We did get close enough to see the snow from a distance though, we flew our drone blindly to capture it but only ended up capturing the grass below it....suffice to say it proved to be a handy lesson in drone flying!

Heading back I decided to take the "short cut" to Nottingham Road, a popular spot in the midlands meander to have a spot of lunch. Little did I know what this shortcut had in store for us. It needed us to navigate our selves though a long gravel route, which much like the Sani Pass Road turned into a rive of mud. Thankfully the Everest off road settings came into play with us making use of majority of the settings, ice and snow mode for the icey parts, rock crawl mode for navigating around tricky escarpments and towards the end of the route, there was a pass with loose sand in which we had to manoeuvre down. Although hair raising for myself and my occupants, the Everest did manage it quite well. There were no "lets do it again" chants though once we eventually got down.

VERDICT

Suffice to say I put the Everest through it's paces in all types of terrain and it came out with flying colours but it again, it all boils down to the price and the value you getting with the Everest, there's still a number of things I would like to see in the car that it doesn't have. It still comes with one of those wap ariels, the car is so damn high as it is, this just makes it taller so I found myself get into a panic every time it hit something! Also while I understand it's an entry level variant, we going to need that full touch screen display, the small screen this particular model came with was so small that my cell phone screen was bigger than it. Hopefully now with SYNC 3 out, Ford would consider adopting this in most of their Everest models. Another grip is the key, it's nice but I would expect for a vehicle like the Everest to have the smart keyless system like the Mustang and Fusion come with but that's just me. It is on the whole an extremely good vehicle, while it doesn't have all the bells and whistles I might be looking for, it's more than capable of the job it has to do. It's big, spacious and fun to drive, and very versatile which just ticks all the boxes that people check when buying an SUV.