For the last week, I've been piling on the miles on a 2014 Fusion Ecoboost 1.5L Rental. Overall, it's a very nice car. It's comfortable, nimble, quiet and rides/handles quite well. In fact, I'd say the handling is taught and the steering is quick, nice!
But, really, I wanted to talk about the TINY ecoboost engine powering a reasonably big and quite heavy car. It's a non issue. It makes plenty of power for normal driving, gets off the line quickly, with almost no delay. Gear ratio's and shift points are well calibrated to this engine. The engine makes peak torque quite low in the RPM range, so there is no need to rev it out. Keep it around 2500 during acceleration and it will keep up with traffic. I found that I let it upshift, then press the accelerator at 2500 and it pulls nicely.
Talking about revs, the engine's redline is 6300 (or so) and it runs out of steam well before that. Too bad really, as it could be a good bit more fun if it made power well up towards redline.
MPG's since new (24,000 miles on the odo) showed 26.8 on the display. Since I'm mostly highway driving at the speed limit (70 MPH) , I'm getting 31 MPG with AC on MAX, since it's hot here in the South. Slowing to 65 and turning AC off brings MPG to about 33. I could not do any better than that at any typical highway speed around here. Even 65 was a bit slow for folks in the RH lane.
The engine is remarkably quiet. I'm absolutely unable to hear it during normal driving at speed. However, I do have one gripe. It shakes at idle, when in gear. It feels like idle is somewhat unrefined and a bit noisy. That's too bad, as it's otherwise extremely well refined. Does this matter? Well, when stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours, yeah, it does.
As compared to a 2014 Accord Sport 2.5L with manual transmission, the Fusion gets the same MPG, is slightly smaller feeling in the back seat (plenty of room in either car though) and the engine is a touch less refined feeling at idle. The Accord is head and shoulders faster. A better comparison would be Accord 2.5L to Fusion 2.0 EB. Where the Fusion should be considerably faster in real world conditions.
Overall, a very, very nice car with great driving dynamics.
But, really, I wanted to talk about the TINY ecoboost engine powering a reasonably big and quite heavy car. It's a non issue. It makes plenty of power for normal driving, gets off the line quickly, with almost no delay. Gear ratio's and shift points are well calibrated to this engine. The engine makes peak torque quite low in the RPM range, so there is no need to rev it out. Keep it around 2500 during acceleration and it will keep up with traffic. I found that I let it upshift, then press the accelerator at 2500 and it pulls nicely.
Talking about revs, the engine's redline is 6300 (or so) and it runs out of steam well before that. Too bad really, as it could be a good bit more fun if it made power well up towards redline.
MPG's since new (24,000 miles on the odo) showed 26.8 on the display. Since I'm mostly highway driving at the speed limit (70 MPH) , I'm getting 31 MPG with AC on MAX, since it's hot here in the South. Slowing to 65 and turning AC off brings MPG to about 33. I could not do any better than that at any typical highway speed around here. Even 65 was a bit slow for folks in the RH lane.
The engine is remarkably quiet. I'm absolutely unable to hear it during normal driving at speed. However, I do have one gripe. It shakes at idle, when in gear. It feels like idle is somewhat unrefined and a bit noisy. That's too bad, as it's otherwise extremely well refined. Does this matter? Well, when stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours, yeah, it does.
As compared to a 2014 Accord Sport 2.5L with manual transmission, the Fusion gets the same MPG, is slightly smaller feeling in the back seat (plenty of room in either car though) and the engine is a touch less refined feeling at idle. The Accord is head and shoulders faster. A better comparison would be Accord 2.5L to Fusion 2.0 EB. Where the Fusion should be considerably faster in real world conditions.
Overall, a very, very nice car with great driving dynamics.
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