Ford Kuga 2.0-litre TDCi Titanium
A New Crossover SUV Called the Kuga is Launched by Ford
This is unknown territory for the Ford Company in Europe, as it has never tried a car like this before.
Kuga shares the new Ford family face with an upper and lower trapezoid grille and swept back headlights.
Priced from £20,495 in the UK, the Kuga is competitively priced, however the model on this test was a Ford Kuga 2.0-litre TDCi Titanium and is priced from £22,500.
Interior of Ford Kuga
On the inside, the materials used have a quality look and feel and are on a par with VW who are the benchmark when it comes to interiors in European cars. The dash has a neat and uncomplicated look to it, while the brushed aluminium adds to the car’s class.
A frustration was the location of the engine stop-start button, as it sits between the 2 main air vents. A small niggle but it’ll be there every time the engine is fired up.
Practicality and load space inside the Ford Crossover
There are plenty of storage solutions, for instance there is a centre stack, which has a deep bin. If you need more, the second row of seats have under-seat storage and there’s stowage under the floor of the luggage compartment area.
One of the real advantages of the Kuga is that is really easy to load especially when in multi-storey car parks. It can be accessed through a handy split tailgate, which holds loads of up to 410 litres or if there are awkward items to load then the whole tailgate can be opened.
On the road the Kuga performs well
The Ford Kuga is powered by a 2.0-litre Durateq TDCi engine, producing 136PS of power. Ford claims that the car will get from zero to 62mph in just over 10.5 seconds while you have a maximum speed of 112mph. There’s plenty of torque as well – 320nm at 2,000rpm that should be plenty of shove when you need to overtake
The engine is very refined and there is no noise intrusion into the cabin when at speed or at idle. It’s a proper off-roader too, the vehicle is equipped with a Haldex intelligent AWD system with variable torque distribution – this means that the system will provide optimum torque distribution when accelerating and decelerating giving you a better power delivery when needed.
The Kuga is a very comfortable cruiser at motorway speed while it has all the Ford driving characteristics which means it handles just like a car and there is minimum body roll when cornering.
Ford seems to have set the benchmark in the SUV Crossover class with the Kuga, it is solidly built, attractive to look at. It’s also green. The model in UK specification emits 169g/km and returns 44.1mpg on the combined cycle.
