The new Ford EcoSport brings all-wheel drive performance to a very small subcompact crossover package. In this review Ryan takes a look at the loaded Titanium edition both off-road and on pavement. This particular EcoSport includes special paint, 4WD (AWD), Ford Sync, an automatic transmission and more.
The subcompact crossover market is heating up so it only makes sense that a global car maker like ford would enter it with a bang well today we’re looking at one of their vehicles that has a turbocharged engine as an option all-wheel drive and looks that will make you stand up and take notice yep it’s the 2018 ford ecosport the model were looking at today is
The 2018 titanium 4-wheel drive edition this one comes loaded with extras and even has wheels don’t look like snowflakes the ford ecosport starts at just over eighteen thousand dollars this one yeah it’s loaded you’re looking at twenty-seven thousand and change that’s a lot of money for a very little car let’s get started with what’s under here but before i
Open it i have to tell you the turbo engine that’s actually the entry level engine you see it has one liter and 123 horsepower this one is bigger and better what we have here is a 2 liter inline 4 it puts out 166 horsepower and 149 pound peete of torque it is connected to a 6-speed automatic transmission that does have a sport mode and because this is optioned
With all-wheel drive it has what ford calls their four-wheel drive system yes it’s actually all-wheel-drive brief aside on that in the uk they call four-wheel drive and all-wheel drive it’s interchangeable there is they both mean the same thing in the u.s. they mean something different however ford has called this 4-wheel drive even though it’s all-wheel drive
So i’m going to use their terminology with this specific drivetrain the epa rates us at 23 miles to the gallon around town and 29 on the highway oh and if you wanted to toe with this it can actually tow up to 2,000 pounds which i didn’t bother to look it up but i think that’s class-leading this car is so small it’s almost like they lobbed two feet off the back
So of course it’s going to suffer in storage capacity as it does this is 20 cubic feet so they claim put the seats down and you get fifty cubic feet now it does have a couple interesting things going on here we have the world’s smallest privacy screen i think it also might be the world’s flimsiest and down here you get a privacy floor it’s a false floor for
Sticking a person underneath it now the initial asian market versions of this car had a wheel on the back this one doesn’t it gets a fix-a-flat down here ah so in the second row it is tight for claims you can fit five in this vehicle i think that’s stretching it headroom not a lot of it you get these little indents for coat hangers if you’re running to your
Restaurant job and this seat is actually in the position i would drive in so this is not a fake knee space this is real-world knee space and there ain’t a lot i do however get an ac power socket down here which is cool because this is a titanium model i also get a 2 cup holder right there thankfully i’m in the front today though can’t get foot out so many car
Makers are trying to reinvent the wheel especially when it comes to their sub compacts they’re like everything needs to be in it and everything needs to be weird well this car is surprisingly normal i mean we get a traditional prn d lever down here i mean it’s like a lever like it was 10 years ago and for the handbrake yeah it’s actually a handbrake it’s not
A little hydraulic button hiding somewhere now that doesn’t mean this isn’t modern you do get a push-button start on this titanium version you also get cruise control the grant is just regular cruise control no adaptive cruise control but you know i’ll take it and then you get an aircon system that works it’s not dual zone it’s not fancy it doesn’t detect
Your you know your your body temperature or anything like that but you know it has heated seats and it lets you set a temperature and i like that up here we have a gauge cluster that is again very traditional we have rpm on the left speedo on the right physical gauges telling us how much gas is in it and what the temperature of the engine is these are all
Very practical normal things and then above it we get a multi-function display that gives us some additional information such as what the current mpgs are what features are enabled in the car i can even see what radio station i’m on so that’s kind of nice now speaking of radio this is interesting what ford has done is they’ve taken one of their more high-end
Systems and stuck it into this little ecosport and it’s great because it has the latest version of sync sync 3 which i’m actually rather fond of sync 2 was horrible that you could like you know set that one on fire this one is very nice it’s practical its straightforward its modern it’s clean it’s all the things you want in a navigation system and this one
Actually includes navigation so often in these smaller cars they’ll give you the screen but won’t give you the nav this one it has nav and let’s just say that you don’t want to use their nav or you want to enable deeper functionality with your iphone or your android device that’s ok because this one does support android auto as well as apple carplay let’s go
And plug it in and there we go apple carplay now it is interesting the colors on this display do appear to be slightly muted they’re not as vivid as you will see in something like a bmw screen for example but considering the cost of this vehicle and the size of this vehicle i think this actually is very practical and it makes sense it’s good enough actually
It’s better than good enough it’s really great it’s huge it’s big it’s right in my eyeline it’s super easy to see and it’s easy to use with multi-touch functionality and because the latest version of carplay supports apple maps and ways i have that with a push of a button going a bit deeper in this system you can pick between several inputs including xm radio
If you’re a subscriber and you can also pick a non iphone or an android device as well as fm and am phone integration is of course included because i have carplay connected right now it has my family members there however if i did not have carplay plugged in when i click phone it’ll go to the ad phone and this gives me my bluetooth hands-free i’m not gonna go
Through that because all cars are basically the same one other nice feature here is not the fact that it has a backup camera because all modern cars are required to have backup cameras but this goes one step further it has parking sonar xin the back which will show rear cross traffic alert and it also has animated lines showing me not just my wheel path but also
A tow hitch path because this thing can tow 2,000 pounds which is a surprising amount for a vehicle this small i mean this vehicle weighs 3,500 pounds and it can tow mm that’s kind of impressive ok why don’t you go and walk around it so we can see well there we go rear parking aid nice ok oh i can zoom in 4 trailer hitch lineup oh that’s pretty cool actually
And of course because this is 2018 there has to be something really modern and not really useful we have mobile apps personally i don’t find mobile apps very useful some people i guess like them i don’t know why they keep adding them i think they’re just really trying to come up with new things to do and i could of course turn the entire thing off now not all
Cars have such a convenient turn it all off button but i i really like that that’s there cuz sometimes you’re driving late at night you just don’t want the screen boom done gone bye-bye being that this was primarily a european design that was imported into the u.s. it of course has auto start/stop at idle for the engine so it shuts it off when you come up to a
Stoplight and there’s a big button down here if i want to turn off traction control usb sockets are in abundance we get to up here even though this is the top-end model there are no paddle shifters that kind of would have been nice although i probably would have complained that they were too small anyway so let’s just call that one a draw i guess the steering
Wheel is wrapped in fairly decent leather for the price here that’s not bad the seats also i’m not sure if these are leather or pleather or what they’re either a really high quality vinyl or a really low quality leather either way they look really nice they’re perforated on the sides and they have a pretty good comfortable seating position i would like it to
Be a little bit lower but it’s not because a headroom i just prefer to sit a little lower in the car so it’s okay you do get used to that it also has power adjustments on the seat lots of them actually forward back and then i also have a mechanical lumbar over here which is interesting steering wheel it telescopes as well as moves these are all very good things
These things are more important in a smaller car like this because you know fit is everything and especially in a smaller car you want to make sure that you get into a comfortable driving position one last feature i want to touch on no not that one one last feature i want to touch on is the fact that this actually does have a sunroof it’s very small but it’s
There overall very nice feature set it’s practical it makes sense and it feels like a normal car which is kind of weird that i’m saying this but that’s very unusual these days so let’s go ahead and take it out but we’re not just gonna drive it on roads this is basically a small all-wheel drive crossover so what are we gonna do with it we’re gonna take it for
Some light off-roading and i say light because this doesn’t have an off-road feature set it doesn’t even have hill descent control it doesn’t have a low-range gearbox it doesn’t have a traction control system designed for offroad situations no it’s just a car and sometimes those are the best vehicles to take off roading so we’re gonna do that and see how well
It does so we are in a huge northwest off-road playground ok i’m gonna go ahead and start this off with a bang let’s put it into sport mode turn traction control off let’s do a launch in three two one it’s not exactly a rally car but it will do okay so the ground clearance on this ecosport is 7.6 inches but how are they approaching departure angles let’s go
Ahead and dip down into a hole no scratching that’s a good sign yeah no problem that was easy how about a full-throttle turn yes it can nice i like small fun crossovers this vehicle is lacking in dedicated off-road features it doesn’t have a low-range gearbox it doesn’t you have a crawl mode it doesn’t even emulate a crawl mode most vehicles also in the
Crossover section at least have a hill descent control this one yeah you got to use your foot oh oh come on oh oh i kind of eased into that a little much oh okay so okay right now i have traction control completely off and i am stuck okay so let’s go ahead i’m gonna put traction control system back on and now i’m gonna ease out wow traction control actually
Works who needs fancy gadgets this works fine let’s try some sand this might be a mistake oh man that’s soft we do not have a tow rig with us i had gravity on my side and that’s a good thing if i didn’t have gravity i don’t think i would have made that out and i don’t have a tow rope so i didn’t don’t really want to push yeah no problem starting to really
Respect the ecosport so capable i love it you know sometimes you don’t need a big fancy vehicle for off-roading sometimes you need something just small and fun and that’s what the ecosport is it’s a small fun crossover so you can pretty much take anywhere except they’re not going down i’m not taking it there i can not nope i have to get home tonight nope
Not doing that one ok we’ve seen how it does offroad now let’s go see how it does where it actually was intended to exist on pavement well okay here we go tiptoe onto the cement and away we go goodbye dirt it was fun but i don’t think that’s what this car was intended for okay now let’s go find a place to do a zero to sixty test because i’m really curious
What this thing can do this looks like a good spot let’s do it right here zero to sixty okay so first i’m going to put the car into sport mode really nothing else to do i’ll mash the gas mash the brake release the brake and go okay twenty thirty forty fifty and sixty you know the zero forty ain’t bad but once you start getting into that fifty and sixty range
It’s definitely on the slow side still better than the new twenty nineteen subaru forester ipad now just because it’s small doesn’t mean that it’s a lightweight this thing weighs almost 3400 pounds that’s just a couple hundred pounds less than a ford escape yeah kind of porky for its size isn’t it handling is probably as you would expect it’s a little on the
Vague side but the suspension is nicely damped for north american roads now partially because of the real high ground clearance this has seven point six inches you’re looking at a lot of body roll in the corners i mean we are just rolling around these corners here cornering it’s still kind of a fun car and that’s mostly because it is just so tiny and has ground
Clearance at all wheel drive it has all the things that i like it’s just a little lacking in power and road field could definitely be better that’s for sure so honestly sealed surfaces is where the ford ecosport truly belongs it’s not really designed for off-roading if you’re looking for something that’s really small has all-wheel drive and enough oomph under
The hood to actually be fairly enjoyable if the ford ecosport really isn’t bad it’s just unfortunate that you have to call it the ecosport when it’s spelled eco sport i don’t know what ports thinking honestly that’s ridiculous for driving sports tv i’m ryan douthit thanks for watching be sure to subscribe for more great videos also leave us a comment give us
A thumbs up tell us what you think cuz you know at the end of the day we make these videos for you you
Transcribed from video
We take the 2018 Ford Ecosport Crossover Offroading (Full Review) By Driving Sports TVliveBroadcastDetails{isLiveNowfalsestartTimestamp2018-11-06T170011+0000endTimestamp2018-11-06T171908+0000}
