Opening
My daily commute is just under 100km. And it is mostly during peak hours. Now, just to give you an idea why the car I drive on a daily basis must be comfortable, efficient and quiet, here are a few stats. The average speed on my commute hovers at a little over 20kmph. And in that time, I must be patient, calm and alert to allow motorists – bantai riders, irate taxi drivers and ‘Dhoom’ inspired autorickshaws – to pass me by without much drama.
The Ford Figo, so far, has proved to be a good mix to deal with this ordeal. But, we will get into that in a later report. For now, it’s time to dissect the Figo’s interiors. The design of the car’s insides might not impress you, but its practicality most definitely will. There’s enough and more storage space around the central tunnel, in the door pockets, and even the glovebox is decently big. The boot holding capacity, particularly for a car this size is notable as well.
Passenger space isn’t bad either. It might be a tight squeeze for five adults but for a nuclear family of four, there’s hardly anything to complain about. But if we did, we’d say the seats could have been designed better. These are large and cushy, but the ones at the front have odd bolstering for the backrest, and that makes finding a comfy driving positioning a tedious and a long-drawn affair.
We do, however, like the features of this Ford Figo Titanium automatic comes with. The electric fold for the ORVMs is a nice touch and we love the placement of the boot-opening button on the dash. The latter is especially helpful when entering mall parking spaces; that is something I do everyday given that my office shares its parking space with a mall. The Figo also gets a comprehensive trip computer with readouts for trip, ambient temperature, instantaneous and average fuel economy, average speed and distance to empty. And, it is easy to navigate.
The digital climate control system is effective, the audio system has good sound quality, and the Bluetooth functionality is almost flawless. Our only grouse here would be the user interface of the multimedia system. Given the small screen, it takes time to figure out what and how one must use the various buttons on the multimedia to access the information one needs. Accessing the song list of a USB stick in particular has proved to be quite tiresome so far. Also given this is the Titanium trim, addition of rear parking sensors would have been great.
Next month, we will delve deeper into Figo’s battle with other city motorists. It promises to be a good one.
Read Ford Figo Long Term Report 1 HERE.
