An SUV for people who need an SUV
• On a trip to Crooks Corner the road was not visible under the water for hundreds of metres, making a 4x4 a real necessity
Arriving outside one of the country’s smarter schools at pickup time, you might be forgiven for thinking that the parents (and au pairs) lining up to fetch the kids had taken some time out from an overlanding expedition. The SUVs and crossovers (ordinary cars with an SUV-shaped body nailed on top of the chassis) outnumber what might be understood as ordinary cars (sedans, station wagons and hatchbacks) by several factors.
Establishing whether they really need these cars is less straightforward than you’d think.
There are some mitigating factors. People like the elevated driving position. For some, a bakkie-based SUV, such as a Toyota Fortuner or Ford Everest, being based on commercial vehicles, will outlive even the most brutal hardships of a decade of family motoring and make good sense. Parents of smaller children like to be able to strap little ones into car seats at the abdomen level offered by an SUV instead of knee-level offered by a car. Some SUVs offer seven seats and many have cavernous boots. In some places, road conditions are poor, and SUV toughness is required. Crash safety is a complicated topic, but the rules of physics do apply in, for example, a head-on smash — the bigger the better in that scenario.
But these advantages are challenged by the negatives. SUVs are significantly more prone to rollovers — a very dangerous event — are less able to manoeuvre out of trouble and have worse braking distances. They are heavier, less fuelefficient, have comparatively poor roadholding, need expensive tyre and brake replacements and — depending on the levels of engineering —
can shake you around inside like a rag doll in a washing machine. Many of the problems listed above are solved far more elegantly and efficiently by a multipurpose vehicle (MPV), such as the brilliant Kia Carnival or Volkswagen Kombi.
There is one other reason people buy SUVs that’s impossible to argue with —
when you actually need a fourwheel-drive. If you’re a large family that likes to adventure far from the tarmac, tow heavy trailers or caravans and seat seven people, then there is no other functional automotive solution.
To test this, I drove as far away from Cape Town as it is possible to do in the republic —
to Crooks Corner, where SA, Mozambique and Zimbabwe meet. The road along the Luvuvhu River isn’t challenging in ordinary circumstances, but after a deluge of biblical proportions stretches were so sodden that the road wasn’t visible under the water for hundreds of metres at a time.
This challenge came at the end of that long road from Cape Town, seven-up, including a toddler strapped into a spacehungry, rear-facing seat, and towing a large luggage trailer close to its weight limit.
The Ford Everest XLT Sport was the car tasked with the job and, some niggles aside, it passed a serious test of the real job of an SUV.
The XLT comes with a 2l turbodiesel engine of solid provenance. It doesn’t try to do too much too cleverly, but 154kW and 450Nm of torque are more than enough for the famous school run. It’s matched with a 10-speed automatic transmission, which, with the odd wobble aside, does a solid job of selecting the right gear at the right time. That means the relatively limited outright power of the car is mitigated by a gearbox that can keep the engine in the meat of a good torque curve, ensuring that, even laden to the hilt with people and payload, it never felt like it was trying too hard on the cruise, and most of the time was happy to be left bumbling along in 10th gear with the cruise control on.
It was at times intensely hot — more than 40ºC — but all three rows of seats have aircon vents and the car showed no sign of struggling with the heat and the very heavy load. Equally, descending into Magoebaskloof, the brakes didn’t complain despite the considerable load and intense temperatures, helped along by Ford’s “Tow/Haul” setting, which kicks in the engine braking earlier.
Limited kilowatts and heavy loads do affect overtaking, of course, but people towing and with seven people on board need to embrace a world of patience in any case. I didn’t find it bothersome.
Once off the freeway and onto broken R-roads I found myself driving more for the protection of the trailer than the car, and took it pretty easy, but even this couldn’t stop a fairly dramatic blowout of one of the trailer’s tyres somewhere on the road home from Punda Maria (and my thanks to the Vorster family, local citrus farmers, who stopped to help sort out that particular mess).
In the park and free of the deadweight of the luggage trailer, the Everest got into some very sticky mud, requiring lowrange and all the 4x4 capacity it could come up with. Comparatively flubbery 20-inch Goodyears soaked up the abuse and handled the sopping conditions very well. Driving conditions were truly grim — and it’s hard to imagine anyone requiring any more 4x4 capacity than I required on those roads with a family in tow. The result was that we were able to park by the Limpopo River alone and watch the hippos and the birds, a moment of stunning solitude and beauty worth the trip by itself.
The small negatives were some glitchiness and clunkiness in the dashboard electrics and some moments of witlessness from the gearbox. It is a very large car inside and out, which means scraping it is rather easy to achieve. In town, the car is a little thirsty, and I ended up with a combined cycle of about 11.6l/100km.
On the open road for this trip to the bush with all the weight it averaged 10.3l/100km, which I thought was an excellent demonstration of the happy relationship between a small, torquey motor and a good gearbox.
CRASH SAFETY IS A COMPLICATED TOPIC, BUT THE RULES OF PHYSICS DO APPLY IN A HEAD-ON SMASH — THE BIGGER THE BETTER IN THAT CASE
WE WERE ABLE TO PARK BY THE LIMPOPO RIVER ALONE AND WATCH THE HIPPOS AND THE BIRDS, A MOMENT OF STUNNING BEAUTY
Contemplating the road home a week or two later —
2,050km, Google Maps told me
— I wasn’t filled with horror as you might expect. As much as the Everest is in fact a Ford Ranger bakkie under the skin —
which means it was completely at home doing all the hard work
— it also comes with a giant touchscreen interface and an absolutely thumping stereo, airbags all over the place and automatic emergency braking. It’s a genuinely comfortable car.
That means the Everest, at under R1m, ticks a lot of boxes. In fact, in the never-ending trade-off between price, ruggedness and refinement there isn’t much out there to match it for those who want a family car that can really hack it off-road.