MOUNTAIN EXPLORER
Ford’s Everest SUV
Anyone in the North Island with a shred of sanity will know that the journey from Auckland to Feilding — a 500km trek — is best carried out by plane. Yet for the last three editions of the New Zealand Grand Prix at Manfeild, I’ve driven.
But there have been few regrets. You see a lot of New Zealand over that six-and-a-bit hour drive, from the City of the Future known as Hamilton, to Tirau’s enormous tin dog, to the snow-kissed Mt Ruapehu.
The problem over the three years, though, is that each drive was undertaken in a car not terribly well suited to road-tripping.
Year one was in a tiny Mazda MX-5 RF-S; year two in a Suzuki Swift Sport. Both were magnificent cars, but lacked the much-needed space for such a task.
A 2019 Ford Everest on the other hand? Well, that might just about be the perfect device for the Kiwi road trip.
While the the blue oval’s revised seven-seater looks almost exactly like the old one, it does carry a few big differences — one of the biggest being price and spec.
Gone is the Trend base model, with the top-spec 4WD Titanium now the only model offered. Initially the SUV landed with one price of $87,990 plus on-roads, but a price drop earlier this month now sees the Everest priced at $79,990.
In the body-on-frame, utebased, three-row SUV stakes, that still sounds expensive. A Toyota Fortuner is $25k cheaper, while Holden’s Trailblazer and SsangYong’s Rexton are $21k and $30k cheaper respectively in their base 4WD variants.
But there are plenty of positives that make the Everest a compelling entry in an admittedly shrinking sub-segment.
For one, it’s nice to look at. Whether it’s objectively more attractive than the Trailblazer or Rexton is up for debate, but it’s certainly less of an eyeful than the weirdly proportioned Fortuner.
The Everest’s emphasised wheel-arches and contrastcoloured bash plate and diffuser bridge the gap between mature and macho, while the chromeladen front fascia provides a friendly face.
Standard equipment in the one-spec-fits-all Everest includes the same suite of safety tech as before but now with autonomous emergency braking added alongside familiar tools such as active park assist, adaptive cruise control, and blind-spot monitoring. These complement Ford’s advanced, unchanged Terrain Management System.
An 8in touch screen in the centre of the dash houses Ford’s SYNC3 system, which includes Apple CarPlay and Android auto, plus satnav and a reverse camera. It’s an interface that’s ageing fast, but
remains easy to use.
Other interior toys include a panoramic moon-roof and the ability to move the third row of seats electronically instead of wrestling with levers and pulleys.
These touches are nice, although they’re somewhat countered by plenty of hand-medown hard plastics from the Ranger (including on the tops of the door cards).
So, as impressive as some of these elements are, none necessarily gives the Everest a big edge over the aforementioned competition. It’s only when we tackle the great big elephant in the the room that the Everest starts to make sense.
That elephant is, of course, the engine. The move to only offer one spec of Everest in New Zealand extends to the engine bay and its 2-litre bi-turbo diesel.
Yes, it’s the same powertrain from the Raptor, and here it’s paired to the same 10-speed automatic transmission. Power and torque are the same as Raptor, 157kW at 3750rpm and 500Nm at between 1750-2000rpm respectively (14kW and 30Nm over the outgoing five-cylinder 3.2-litre unit).
Braked towing capacity is a commendable 3.1-tonne; 100kg more than the Trailblazer, but 400kg less than the Rexton’s segment-best 3500kg.
While we fell in love with the Ranger Raptor, the engine’s performance on tarmac remained something of a sticking point. But plonked into the Everest and stripped of all the Raptor’s gravel-bashing sports pretensions, it makes a whole lot of sense.
Despite Everest being about 150kg heavier than the Raptor, the engine feels sprightly enough off the line and capable over hills and overtaking.
But, more than anything else, the 2-litre’s biggest positive is how quiet it is. Whether on start-up or cruising at 100km/h, it’s a refined unit that’s barely audible in the Everest’s cabin.
We managed under 8 litres/ 100km, but those numbers never took too long to increase to 10 litres/100km and beyond when roads turned twisty.
What Everest does better than any of the aforementioned rivals is refinement and comfort. And the engine is simply the start.
It rides on a revised and softened suspension set-up which — factoring in the light, predictable steering, and clever solutions like interior noisecancellation and an acoustic windscreen — makes the Everest the most comfortable and refined SUV in the segment.
Flies in the comfort ointment include front seats that are flat and lack lumbar adjustment, occasional jerkiness from the transmission at low speeds, and the front-end’s tendency to ”dive” under brakes. And, yes, there are cheaper options out there with similar capabilities on paper. But none is as liveable, or well optioned as Everest.
Long live the Kiwi road trip.