It's Just a Hatchback With Good Ground Clearance

Exterior Beautiful... Yes, that's the word for the exterior. It has perhaps most rad front design with huge grills and thin headlamps running along the sides. Side profile is also quite nice. Tail lamps are rather small but back also looks good with the spare wheel giving the SUV feel. Build quality is also good with relatively heavy doors and a good feel about the sheet metal. From the outside, it's difficult to believe that it's sub 4 meters. Perhaps the spare wheel on the back door creates this optical illusion.

Interior (Features, Space & Comfort) Interior is loaded with features complete with sync, push button start and keyless entry, sans the navigation and rear ac vents. I test drove the top variant, so it was all leather affair. Though the feel was good, it was all too dark inside and since the interior is not as roomy as you would expect in an SUV or even a compact SUV, they could have done better with lighter shades. Dark leather makes the interiors look even smaller.

Though nobody would deny that there can't be any better space management in a sub 4m vehicle, it certainly pinches in the boot area. It's just good for 2 average size suitcases or typical weekend shopping with family. If you plan for a long trip, well, you know... Look somewhere else.

Front seats are comfortable and the rear seats have good leg room, I think even for a six footer. But the rear seats can definitely not accommodate 3 adults comfortably.

I'm not sure how the absence of rear ac vent would affect the cooling in cities with hot summers as the ac did just right for the front seats in a typical sunny Bangalore afternoon which is not too hot.

Engine Performance, Fuel Economy and Gearbox I drove with ac on and tried to crank the engine as hard as I could in Bangalore traffic. Unlike Duster, there was not much lag in 2nd gear. But after certain RPMs, Duster comes off much better in terms of performance. EcoSport didn't feel like a 91 bhp engine and there was nothing exciting about it; it just pulled like a normal hatchback.

Electronically assisted power steering was very light and felt good in traffic. Sales Rep told that it would switch to hydraulic at 90 kmph. In my opinion, it should switch to hydraulic at around 70 as 90 seems to be too high a speed with such light steering.

Gear box was really hard. Sales Rep told me that it gets harder with continuous usage and since that was a test drive vehicle, it was driven a lot. Conventional wisdom tells just opposite. If what the Rep told is really the case, it's too bad.

Suspensions are hard! I intentionally took it over small double humps, the kinds you would see in parking lots. And boy, did they carry inside?! They felt like they would in an ordinary car; a good hard thud. Nothing SUVish about it. This is where you would like to be in a Duster.

Final Words Though Ford EcoSport is marketed as a compact SUV, is it really one? It drives like a hatch, performs like a hatch and even has space like a hatch. Agreed, it has good ground clearance. So its underbelly would not hit speedbumps or pot holes. And it has a tyre plonked at its rear door. But that's not all you want from a SUV. It surely is a very good hatchback, perhaps a bit more than that. But is it worth paying (on road in Bangalore) 13 lakhs (for top trim)? If you feel it is, it's the car for you. If you can do without high ground clearance, buy some premium sedan.

Build quality, safety (6 airbags), looks, features in top variantLess spacious, hard suspension, no rear ac vent, no navigation, hard gearbox