Video Editor: Puneet Bhatia
An invitation to go dune-bashing on the pristine sand dunes west of Jaisalmer in the Thar desert popped into the mailbox a few weeks ago. And I wasn’t going to turn that down.
We were going to be driving the 2020 Ford Endeavour on those dunes. Wait, what’s different with the Ford Endeavour you ask? The big change is the engine and transmission.
The Ford Endeavour now gets a 2-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine that puts out 170 PS of power and 420 Nm of torque. This unit is BS-VI compliant (with Ad Blue) and replaces the 3.2 litre and 2.2 litre motors it had earlier. The bigger change is to the transmission. It gets a 10-speed automatic (torque converter) transmission, which as virtually transformed the vehicle.
After spending a couple of days with the Endeavour, here are some quick first impressions.
Not much has changed in terms of looks. You get new Bi-LED projector headlamps in front and there’s a small change to the badge that now only says Endeavour. The alloy design has also changed.
Driving the Ford Endeavour 2.0 Titanium Plus 4WD
With the 10-speed gearbox you have a whole lot of gears to choose from. The thing is it doesn’t really need to use all 10 gears. So it skips gears. When you are accelerating hard it will go from 1-3-5-7 to 10. It touches 10th gear around 95-100 Kmph. The engine is just ticking over at 1,500 rpm, which is good for fuel efficiency. Although overall, with all the driving we did we got about 11.4 Kmpl, Ford claims it is 13.9 Kmpl.
The smart select system allows you to lock out gears from the 10-speed box, especially for off-road driving. Combined with the terrain response system it is really neat off-road. You get multiple modes like before, mud, snow, sand, rock, 4-wheel-drive low range, differential lock for the rear, and all this makes it pretty capable offroad.
Ford has worked on the suspension of the Endeavour and now the ride quality has improved considerably compared to the previous version. But when you take a sharp turn there is still some body roll, because it is a body-on-frame SUV after all.
Value For Money?
In terms of features, the Endeavour is fully loaded. You get everything from navigation built-in, Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, reverse camera, panoramic sunroof and parallel park assist, where it takes control of the steering and reverses the car into a parking slot for you.
At this price point of Rs 29.55 lakh to Rs 33.25 lakh ex-showroom, I think that’s pretty good value for money when you compare it with its biggest rival the Toyota Fortuner.
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