Gadgetory

the midsize sedan segment is one of the most popular in the u.s. cars like the Toyota Camry Nissan Altima and Honda Accord have all gotten recent updates now Ford comes to the fray with the 2013 fusion let's see how it stacks up against the competition this Fusion is the top trim level this car has a spoiler across the back we also have these nice exhaust ports flush with the rear fascia this car also has it's sort of fastback roofline that's also pretty popular these days you see that done a lot of cards and now we get to where this car really looks pretty and that's on the front end and it's nicely contoured hood we've got these slick headlights and we've got this grill this grill is Ford's most recent design element you see this on the Fiesta and the focus as well well let's get under the hood and see what's really important here that platter is unmistakable this car also has a turbochargers this is one of Ford's EcoBoost engines it's a 2-liter four-cylinder that gets a 240 horsepower and 270 pound feet of pork those are great numbers for a midsize today and that's what you used to get with the v6 is Ford is doing it with the four-cylinder that also means 21 miles per gallon city 32 miles per gallon highway not fantastic numbers but certainly better than a v6 and with all that power as well in the cabin here we have these two screens on either side of the speedometer left screen showing fuel economy information and basically driving information the right-hand side we've got infotainment functions and I can cycle through with these buttons and see my phone navigation entertainment and climate control settings we also get that same information on the centre LCD now this is the touch part of it one thing I've noticed on this vehicle is the navigation seems a little more reactive it's it actually follows the location of the car better I've had problems with that on the focus and the c-max where the GPS antenna doesn't seem to be very strong and so it takes a little while to get the location of the car down here I've had no problem with the system finding the location of the car we also have in the system is this eye button here which has serious travel link so we get weather sports info ski conditions we get nearby traffic movie listings even and fuel prices and fuel prices is actually one of my favorite because you can look down this list and it'll show you all the nearby gas stations with the price per gallon just hit that setting a lot of automatically throw it into the navigation system so you can drive right to that gas station where you'll get the cheapest gas one problem that remains with this touchscreen is that it reacts really slowly much slower than you expect from a phone or other electronic device and that's a problem for Ford fortunately there's a way around that in this cars you can use voice command for just about everything in this car so I can tap the voice command button play artists fleet foxes say your line number or say another goes one rating artists complete foxes and also with the Sony system in this high trim titanium car we get 10 speakers around the cabin really good sound really tight well balanced with the Sony system you get a big volume knob in the middle and all these little touch buttons around here that control climate control and the sources and tuning and all this sort of stuff on the console here we have the shifter for a six-speed Automatic the only choice transmission with this car it's got the normal PR ND settings plus there's a sport setting and I've got manual shift paddles here on the steering wheel but what this car really has over all the other mid-size sedans out there are a lot of driver assistance features a lot of really interesting things we got blind spot monitoring we've got adaptive cruise control we've got a lane keeping assistant and we also have automatic parallel parking and you don't find those types of features on other mid-size sedans in this range trying out the driver assistance features right now I'm in pretty slow traffic and I've got the adaptive cruise control set for 50 miles per hour but I'm only going about 20 because the car in front of me is going about 20 and in all this traffic to my blind spot monitors are showing when I've got cars to my left side right now because I'm in the right lane it'll show a little icon blinking in the left-hand mirror when there's a car in my blind spot back here once I get above about seems like 35 or 40 miles an hour the lane keeping assist can start to work that's when I see the little line turn green to show that the car is recognizing the lanes so that means if I drift to the side a little bit this car just actually steered me back into my lane because I let it drift off to the right as far as the driving experience goes in a midsize sedan and I feel like the car should drive really easily it should be the kind of car you kind of jump in and just drive to the grocery store and to large extent I think this Ford Fusion accomplishes that task but I do find there's some turbo lag with as a engine when I kick down the accelerator there's a little moment where it kind of thinks about it and then it gets going and you kind of hear that's like hesitation before it really kicks in it's not a lot but it's something a suspension is tuned a little rigid this is definitely not a soft ride from this car it's a really relatively smooth ride but when you go over bumpy bits of the road you really feel it overall I think the ride works pretty well I like it there's some things that interfere slightly with that midsize sedan experience such as the turbo lag but overall it works nicely and the driver assistance features certainly add a lot to it let's price at our 2013 Ford Fusion the titanium level this car costs thirty thousand two hundred that includes quite a few options like the MyFord Touch system and the sony audio system as well we also have $2,000 for the all-wheel-drive system one thousand dollars for a driver assist package that gets you blind spot monitoring and those goodies 995 for adaptive cruise control seven hundred ninety five dollars for the automatic parking system seven hundred ninety five dollars for the navigation system that comes to a total of thirty five thousand seven hundred and eighty five dollars which puts this fully loaded Ford Fusion pretty solidly in a premium car territory but it's got a lot of tech that sets it apart from the mid-size competition