Ford Endeavour TDCi 3.0 Thunder+ (Old)

Refinement at idle is pretty good and the motor is very smooth when cruising. But the car’s handling is nowhere closed to being polished.The handling is identical to the 2.5 Endeavour which is quite impressive for its size. The steering is pretty direct and weights up nicely, and there is minimal body roll for a car that is so tall and sits on a rudimentary ladder chassis with leaf-springs at the rear. Steering feel is decent and grip is good, but the Ford is sometimes reluctant to turn into a corner, needing another quarter-turn of the steering lock. And a lot of the blame falls on that leaf spring rear suspension. When Ford launched the Endeavour in India, it came with a much stiffer set-up. The handling and driving manners were very good, but the ride was hard. Now on this softer setting, it’s much more comfortable, but some of the agility has been lost.

However, these underpinings are betrayed by the ride, which as before is pretty bumpy on bad roads, especially for the third-row passengers, whose experience is akin to being astride a bucking bronco. But all this is just in keeping with the tough-as-nails nature of the Endeavour which comes with a 4x4 transmission.

The Ford is the really nice car to drive off-road though. Much more torque and the greater clearance means you can clamber up pretty much anything.