Ford Endeavour TDCi 3.0 Thunder+ (Old)

The Endeavour Thunder+ can be distinguished from the standard 2.5L Endeavour by the decals on the side and the ladder on the tailgate. There’s no messing around with the square-jawed Endeavour; its blocky lines, large cowl and outsized wheel arches result in an ominous presence.

The Thunder is built on a ladder chassis, with double wishbones, torsion bar front suspensions, four- wheel drive, a low range gearbox, Limited Slip Differential at the rear axle and a lockable central differential. Still, it is based on a pick-up truck (the Ranger) and so comes with a body on ladder frame chassis and leaf springs at the rear.

The interiors are unchanged, which is good and bad news. Good, because the insides are well-built, spacious and feel nice. Bad, because some flaws like the handbrake sprouting from the dash and the unusable third row of seats remain. Nothing much has been changed on the inside of the Thunder+, but the freshened-up insides offered on the car when the 2.5 motor was launched are comfortable and well-built for the most part.

There’s not much changed on the insides of the Even really tall drivers can find a good seating position. The dash looks more the part after the upgrade, there is plenty of storage space and there is a solid, tough-wearing feel to the insides. The large front seats are very comfortable and even long stints are ache-free.

The rear bench seats are supportive and comfortable too, especially as they are slightly raised and you can also recline them. But, because of the high floor, you sit in the knees up position which can get quite uncomfortable, a problem which is only worsened when you move to the third row.
 

Ford’s big boy houses a large common-rail diesel motor that displaces a big 2953cc. The Ford uses a modern common-rail direct injection diesel motor has the potential to deliver a massive TKO (technical knock out). Talk numbers and Ford’s 153bhp stands out. The direct injection Ford has substantially a lot of torque too.

We’d tested Ford’s 2.5-litre Endeavour last August and were floored by it. We expected more of the same from the new 3-litre motor that also uses twin overhead camshafts, 16 valves and a variable geometry turbo to help it breathe deeply. Thankfully, we weren’t disappointed.

The Thunder+ is a big, heavy car at almost two tonnes, but the on-demand torque means it doesn’t feel that way. Unlike the 2.5, that has the same gearing as this car and suffers from some amount of turbo lag, there is almost no waiting for the turbo to spool up. Put your foot down and the Endeavour lunges forward almost immediately, from even as low as 1200rpm. It has a massive 38.7kgm of torque available at 2500rpm and once you’re past 2000rpm both power and torque ascend rapidly, delivering a strong and sustained shove. The motor however starts running out of steam once it closes in on the 4000rpm mark.

The Ford has the tremendous straightline speed, power and torque. Breaching the 100kmph mark takes the Thunder+ a respectable 12.9 seconds. Ninety percent of this performance is available by using only 70 to 80 percent of the powerband and even shortshifting can deliver very strong performance. And because of all that torque, there is seldom any need to downshift on the slick Ford gearbox.

The Endeavor gives back 8.8kpl in the city and 18.3kpl on the highway.

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.