How’s it going?
We’ve now passed through 1,500 miles and the first chance to really test the Tourneo’s legs on a long distance journey.
A round-trip of 450 miles, largely on motorway rather than on the narrow, single track roads in Dorset, showed up a big improvement in fuel consumption figures, up from 31.4mpg to 39.5mpg.
The trip also provided the opportunity to show off some of the other advantages of the Tourneo. Load carrying is part of it, plenty of room for all the weekend bit and pieces, although if you were to be fully laden with people – all eight of them – you would struggle to fit the suitcases in.
I also liked the high riding position, sitting Transit-high, is much less intimidating among the HGVs on the motorway and there’s a great view of the road ahead.
Our earlier reports have already mentioned how the Tourneo is a big hit with family and friends. The young ones certainly enjoyed their club-class trip to the beach. Plenty of room for them, the rest of the family plus all the necessary bags, hampers, buckets and spades.
The Ford Tourneo Custom Active is a full eight-seater and it’s big because it’s based on Ford’s famous transit with the cargo space transformed in our model to accommodate six face-to-face seats trimmed in a leather and deep pile carpet.
Those seats can be configured in different ways or even taken out completely. Four of them have isofix fittings for kids’ car seats.
Outwardly, with blacked out windows in the rear, it could easily be thought as a transit van. Not in a bad way though. The latest Transit model yet is a good looking piece of kit and it size gives you plenty of presence on the road.
With the Tourneo Custom Active, Ford has given the Transit Custom van a more car-like interior packed with handy features while on the outside there’s grey body cladding, extended running boards, roof rails, diamond-cut 17-inch alloys and Active branding.
The part leather rear seats are individual rather than benches, can be positioned individually or removed completely. They also recline and the centre ones can be folded down to provide tables with cup holders.
Particularly handy in the rear there are four – yes four – USB ports to keep the passengers happy listening to their own music or playing on tablets during a long drive.
Interior is popular – even with the dog
Priced at £46,119 on the road, the Tourneo Custom Active comes with an impressive standard specification (see below). Our model has an additional premium paint job at £780 and Adaptive Cruise Control (£600).
Adding a further £606 is ICE pack 24 – DAB/AM?FM radio with 2 x USB, 8″ colour touch screen, Emergency Assistance, sat nav, Ford Pass Connect (embedded modem) compatible with Android Auto/Apple Car Play – which all bump the price up to £48,105.
The 2-litre EcoBlue diesel with six-speed manual gearbox performs nicely enough and only really caught out on the hills when fully loaded. We’ve covered our first 500 miles in the Tourneo with an average fuel consumption return of 33.1 mpg.
The tall driving position gives a great view of the road and over the country hedgerows and the van feels surprisingly light on its feet.
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