Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
Total Recall (Pt 2)
Ford’s Kuga, revisited
We’re fostering a 2012 Ford Kuga 1,6 Ecoboost Ambiente as a long-term test car to see if it’s still a good purchase and how Ford is addressing the fiery situations that have made this SUV grab the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Agostini Manetta [Addressing Pete
Aron at the factory]: “What means far more to me than anything else is our good name. Our reputation represents desire for perfection of the highest quality. I gamble that reputation gladly, because I have absolute faith in every car that leaves this factory. But I will not risk it on a driver in whom I cannot have an equal faith.”
Scott Stoddard: “Y’know one of the most beautiful things about a car? If it isn’t working properly, you can strip the skin off, expose the insides, find out exactly where the trouble is, take out the faulty part and replace it with a new one. If only we could do that with people.” Those two quotes come from the 1966 movie Grand Prix. The film chronicles the behind-the-scenes personal drama of a fictional 1966 Formula season that climaxes at Monza. In the real-life 1966 F1 season, Ford had one car in a driver-owned team fitted with its underwhelming 406 threelitre V8. The driver’s name was Bruce and the team carried his surname: Mclaren. To be fair, 1966 was a transitional year with the FIA making the jump from 1,5litre engines to three litres.
This new standard hit its straps only the following year, when the mighty CosworthFord Dfv-powered Lotus 49 propelled Lotus-ford and driver Jim Clarke to second and third in the constructor and driver standings. That combination would’ve been more successful, but for reliability.
The DFV achieved legendary status through 155 wins from 262 races between 1967 and 1985. Its dominance benefited heavily from the tall, ground-effect-friendly layout and was ultimately immortalised by the very real Ford-produced documentary 9 Days in Summer which chronicles the engine development and agreements between Ford, Cosworth and Lotus. But I digress.
Those words, especially those uttered by the Scott Stoddard character, could easily be coming out the mouth of Clinton Pretorious, service manager at Halfway (formerly County) Ford in Kuils River. It’s a thankless job to contact disgruntled customers and urging them to, yet again, bring their affected Kuga model in for phase two of the recall work. Those aren’t his words, though. He is as cheerful as ever, giving the white glove treatment to what he assumes is just an ordinary customer.
One of his colleagues catches me poking around the freshly serviced car when I go to collect it. He frankly asks who I am. I assume that the jig is up and explain about the previous article and what the Popular Mechanics motive is.
Phase two of the recall includes the fitment of an infrared (IR) sensor in the coolant resevoir, which will accurately track the liquid level and display a warning message on higher-specification (Trend and Titanium) models. On the lowly Ambiente, the engine light will come on
and the car will go into so-called limp mode, which cuts power and shuts down cylinders. There’s also a new thermostat on the fluid line going to the radiator and the radiator itself now opens its cooling vents at 70˚C and not the customary 90˚C.
Pretorious explains all of this to me before I drive off the workshop floor. Before he bids me farewell, I ask if he read the article. A flush spreads over his face as the other shoe drops. Turns out he wasn’t aware of who the customer was. They have a copy of the magazine in the office. Halfway head office questioned him about it. I immediately feel bad for not saying anything then. But I feel an overwhelming sense of pride. I chose Halfway Ford out of convenience; it’s the nearest Ford dealership to my house. I signed up for this story because of how much the Ford brand means to my family.
Speaking of which, the cancer has spread to my dad’s brain. We found out a couple weeks after I filed the first part of this saga. The photo I shot of him leaning on the car is the last time I can remember seeing him stand upright. He now spends his days either in bed or confined to a wheelchair, with shadows of memories of the man he used to be haunting his mind. Some days are good and we can hold a conversation, but then comes days when he’ll awaken from a short snooze and not know where he is.
As a boy, I visited the Silverton factory with my father. It would take forever to eventually get the golf cart to his office, partly because manufacturing plants are massive, mostly because he would meticulously survey every process and worker on the production line, under the guise of giving me a tour. He is a pedant in the way I can never be. Do I think that he would’ve sensed a fault and intervened at the factory level as Kugas rolled off the line in 2011? No. Not even the engineers who developed the 1,6 Ecoboost motor could’ve predicted that.
Kuga is a well-appointed compact SUV and the 1,6 Ecoboost is a thrilling powerplant. My dad would’ve been a very happy owner, especially supported by the excellent dealer service at Halfway Ford Kuils River. There’s a new Kuga out now, a facelift to this one. Secondhand 2012-2014 Ecoboost models are going for a steal, though. PM