Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Figo passes discerning toddler test
THE LAST time I was surprised was about four years ago when my wife – then-girlfriend – told me she was pregnant. I don’t know why I was surprised because you don’t get 17-inch chrome mags when you don’t use contraceptives; you get a baby.
And now, at the age of 3, my daughter is my designated car critic.
Before I tell you about Maphuti’s critiquing skills, I’ll let you in on what surprised me recently. I was driving a Korea gold 2016 Ford Figo 1.5 TDCi Ambiente, the hatch featuring body-colour bumpers. I had stopped at traffic lights, heading out of the Joburg CBD westward from work, where traffic eases up a bit.
The lights turned green,
Ifloored the accelerator, shifted from first to second on the 5-speed manual gearbox and I felt the turbo kick in.
I was pushed back into my seat, and I smiled. During that one second of the turbo engaging, I imagined it compressing the air flowing into the 1.5-litre diesel engine and squeezing more air into a cylinder. As any petrolhead would tell you, more air means that more fuel can be burnt; thus more power from each explosion in each cylinder.
The Figo surprised me – it was bliss. When I arrived home, my designated car critic ran to greet me as she does every day. From my garage you can pass through a door straight into the living room, so as I opened the living-room door she spotted the gold-coloured Figo and demanded to come into the garage to inspect it.
The car sports rear foglights, aircon, tinted windows, front airbags, key-operated central locking and an anti-theft alarm.
“Daddy, your car is nice. Is it for work?” she asked. “Yes, it is,” I answered. “It’s yellow!” she shouted, as I thought to myself, “That’s close enough”.
She is used to seeing my white Polo Vivo 1.4 hatch in the garage or Mk1 Golf Chico in the driveway, so if there’s any new car about, she’s quick to notice and comment.
Maphuti’s critiquing skills usually revolve around whether she knows the colour of the car (she will guess until she gets it right), and whether the car plays songs she knows. I’m more of a cabin guy, since that’s where all the tech equipment is accessed.
The Ambiente features a Bluetooth-enabled four-speaker radio/CD/MP3 sound system with USB and aux inputs and it accepts MyFord Dock, a docking bay, in the centre stack, just above the radio faceplate on the dashboard.
You can hook up your music player or smartphone to the car’s audio system and charge it at the same time.
For a week, the MyFord Dock allowed us to enjoy our fatherdaughter time over some hip hop tunes. (It has nothing to do with indoctrination; we just happen to have the same taste in music.)
The cloth seats in the ride were easy to wipe clean. With a threeyear-old eating snacks and drinking juice in the back seat, a clean rag should be kept in the glove compartment.
The Ambiente comes standard with 14-inch steel rims with plastic covers. Steel is not my favourite; I am from an era of “if you want beauty and performance, you want alloy and if you want tough, ugly workhorses, you want steel”.
But at least it climbed the hills with ease.
All in all, Ford’s “All-New Figo”