Ford Kuga Titanium 2008 Review

Ford Kuga Titanium

About our ratings

Ford's Kuga is a potential best-seller for the Blue Oval brand. The compact SUV is as thoroughly modern and trend-setting as the existing Escape is old and dowdy. Ford Australia needs it -- and right about now...

The Carsales Network drove the new Kuga during the international launch of the new Fiesta. And while the drive was limited to the company's Lommel proving ground in Belgium we can tell you that our initial impressions are that this car is at least as stylish, easy to drive, comfortable and safe as any other compact SUV currently in the market.

In fact, based on our brief drive, we would say it's seriously ahead of the pack and stands to make a real impact in the compact SUV segment -- a segment that has shown consistent growth over a longer period -- and will also lift Ford's profile among the target buyers in that segment.

Driving a compact SUV around a smooth-as-silk proving ground track tells you very little about said SUV. Apart from the Belgian block section of the track, we found no road surface that was less than superb, by comparison with a typical Australian country road, although there were off-camber corners and the sort of dips and jump-ups (on bitumen, mind you) that we wouldn't put past Aussie civil engineers inflicting on road users.

On the Belgian block section, the Kuga didn't skip around sideways the way the more firmly tied-down Focus did, but still mustered enough pace, braking and cornering speed to keep up with the Focus -- and the Mondeo wagon in the lead, driven by a Ford driver who knew the proving ground a bit better than we did.

Over that short section of bitumen already mentioned, where the road turned left, dipped suddenly, jumped up and turned right, the Kuga behaved very well. There was the potential for the suspension to be extended fully, for lift-off oversteer to occur and for dive and understeer, yet the Kuga did none of these -- and frankly, would its likely competitors in Australia have fared as well? In the main, probably not.

Fitted with the same diesel engine as in the Focus TDCi, the Kuga proved remarkably quiet and perfectly willing. Granted the road surfaces were extremely smooth, so it's difficult to say how little or how much tyre noise the Kuga will suffer when/if it reaches Australia, but in Belgium, there was virtually no tyre noise at all from the Goodyear Wrangler tyres 235/55 R17.

All the same, the tyres were not quite up to the job on-road and we could see many buyers opting for tyres that are less compromising, come the first tyre replacement. Even so, the steering was not bad for a cross-over SUV and the turn-in was very good. Kuga's combination of MacPherson struts at the front, 'Control Blade' IRS, electrically-assisted rack and pinion, and a very taut platform provided admirable on-road dynamics, including a cushy ride over the Belgian blocks.

There was no opportunity to drive the Kuga on dirt and logic suggests that it won't go places offroad that a Nissan X-TRAIL or Suzuki Grand Vitara would, but it would make a decent competitor to the Nissan Dualis and other soft-road compact SUVs around -- with the added qualification that it would better most of those on the road.

In Europe, the Kuga will be sold in two levels of trim, Trend and Titanium -- both with 'keyless' start. We drove the Titanium variant, powered by a 2.0-litre turbodiesel shared with the Focus and Mondeo TDCI. Power for that engine is 100kW and torque is 320Nm. According to the manufacturer, the Euro IV-compliant engine, which uses as little as 6.3L/100km and produces (in AWD form) just 169g/km of CO2, will also cope with a wading depth up to 450mm.

Ford is also planning to introduce the 2.5-litre turbocharged five-cylinder petrol engine from the XR5 Focus and Mondeo later this year.

Interestingly, for Ford Australia, there's also a front-wheel drive-only model of the Kuga for certain markets and we wouldn't be surprised if that variant was under active consideration for the local market, given Ford's success with the Territory RWD models and Hyundai's commitment to FWD SUVs such as the Tucson City. We didn't get to drive the FWD Kuga though, our time being limited to a permanent 4WD model.

The Kuga Titanium is primarily distinguished from the Kuga Trend by its 17-inch alloy wheels, as opposed to the 17-inch steel wheels fitted to the latter. Other features of the Titanium model in addition to the Trend specification include: Partial leather upholstery with silver appliqué details, leather-trimmed gear shifter knob, cruise control, rain-sensing wipers, auto on-off headlights, electro-chromatic rear view mirror, dual-zone climate control and Blue-tinted glass.

The driving position proved very good; seats were both comfortable and quite grippy during cornering, generally holding the occupant in place until the vehicle was hitting quite high cornering speeds. Instruments and controls were well placed for ease of readability and use.

Front and rear headroom were both better than adequate for quite tall occupants. Ford claims front-seat headroom of 1008mm and 987mm in the rear. Legroom is adequate for adults too, if the front seats aren't set too far back.

Luggage space was about the same as that of the Dualis. In fact, the Kuga is a lot like the Dualis in respect of packaging, for instance. According to Ford's specs, the Kuga will hold 360 litres of luggage with the 60/40 split-fold rear seat upright, but with the rear seat folded flat, the luggage capacity expands to 1355 litres.

The tailgate opens from about 10cm along the roof, allowing easier access to the luggage compartment and the tailgate can open fully in low-ceiling areas such as garages. Furthermore, users can open the tailgate window separately for those occasions when opening the tailgate in full is unnecessary or difficult (small shopping loads, for example).

There's underfloor storage in the luggage area that will swallow the storage blind and features numerous cubbies in the polystyrene foam template for stowing smaller items. The poly foam can be removed altogether for larger items to be stored under the floor. Picnic tables in the rear fold up from behind the front seats and have a hole in each to hold a cup.

On the safety front, the Kuga is fitted as standard with intelligent dual airbags, thorax-protecting side-impact bags, side curtains for the head protection of front and rear-seat passengers, break-away pedals, ABS, stability control, three point seatbelts and height-adjustable headrests for all seats. Ford is aiming for a five-star Euro NCAP rating for the Kuga and it shows in the specification.

All of this tells us that the Kuga is a very different vehicle from the Escape that is Ford Australia's one current entrant in the VFACTS Compact SUV segment, but it's the crossover car's very differences that mark it as a potential success story in the segment.

How soon can Ford bring it here? Given Ford Australia's intense interest in the Kuga, we foresee it coming here sooner or later, whatever the case. As outlined in our earlier report (more here), Ford Australia anticipates that finding production capacity for the Kuga as an import will be a stumbling block.

All being well, we believe that Ford will aim for the Kuga to be launched as an imported model sometime next year and -- if the local arm gets a go for launch -- a locally manufactured Kuga could join the product range around 2012 or possibly earlier.

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