- Search Cartoons
- Comic Archive
-
Payne
Store
Henry Payne RSS
Payne review: Ford Fusion bulks up
Posted by hpayne on September 8, 2016
In 1989, basketball icon Michael Jordan shaved his thinning pate clean and males with receding hairlines wanted to Be Like Mike. They may have had potbellies out to there, but their HeadBlade domes looked as cool as the coolest athlete on earth.
Auto fashion is like that.
A pouty-mouth grille and fastback shape has made Aston Martin the coolest cat in autodom. So in 2013, Ford’s frumpy Fusion mid-size sedan modeled Aston’s grille and shape and — dude! — it was cool.
Four years later and Fusion is due for its mid-cycle refresh. There may be a million of ’em on the road, but the sleek sedan still turns my head, its upscale looks rivaled only by the Mazda 6. Meanwhile, Aston style has continued to define auto fashion.
Would Fusion evolve with the sexy Brit? Would it get rounder hips like the Rapide sedan? Or copy its full frontal grille? Or get a wrap-around fascia like the stunning DB11 and Bond-inspired DB10?
Um, well: No, no, no and no. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, so Fusion Part Two has played it safe. Rather than rocking out as a full Rapide wannabe, Fusion has just tweaked its Aston cues — headlights more angled here, lips more pointed there, corners edgier over there. A little bling goes a long way, so Fusion’s tookus gets a nice, horizontal chrome strip connecting the rear taillights. And “eyeliner” front LED running lights. Like the theme song that accompanies Broadway musical characters, cars these days must have their own light signature.
But if the Fusion Part One’s exterior wowed, the headliner for Fusion Part Two is what’s under the skin. Like the Michael Jordan wannabe who shaved his head and then adopted a basketball fitness regimen, the new Fusion has put some serious firepower behind that lovely Aston face.
For 2017 Fusion has added a “Sport” badge to its lineup.
But this is no Honda Accord Sport model tarted up with big wheels and a decklid spoiler. Fusion Sport is packed with the same blown, 325-horsepower V-6 found in the F150 and Ford Edge Sport. That would be the first mid-size sedan to pack more than 300 horses.
Whip the Sport out of a Woodward stoplight and it will hit 60 mph in just 5.3 seconds — two seconds quicker than Fusion’s peppy, turbocharged 2.0-liter and just a half-second off Aston’s Rapide sedan. Now we’re talkin’.
Ford is a decidedly bipolar brand these days — a fuel-sipping Ecoboost greenie one minute, a hungry twin-turbo drag racer the next. Nowhere is this split personality more evident than the Fusion lineup, which made headlines in 2013 by offering a hybrid version that went farther on a gallon of fuel (42 miles vs. 41) than King Camry. There’s a plug-in too.
That was then, this is now. For Act Two, the 20 mpg Sport is the least efficient Fusion — part of a Blue Oval performance offensive that has includes the Le Mans-wining Ford GT, asphalt-melting Shelby Mustang GT350, and musclebound Ford Focus ST and RS hot hatches.
“We decided not to do an ST version of the Fusion. This customer is not quite as hardcore,” says Todd Soderquist, chief program engineer for Fusion. But Soderquist didn’t hold back much. This is a motorhead who spends his leisure time wringing the neck of a GT350 at a two-mile racetrack he built in Nebraska.
The Fusion Sport would sound great on a racetrack, too. WAAUUUUUGHHHHHH!! I nail the throttle coming out of the twisties near Hell, Michigan, and for a moment wonder if it isn’t a masculine Ford V-8 under the hood. Put Sport in SPORT mode and the sound sharpens, the steering tightens and the tranny holds a higher gear to take full advantage of 380 pound-feet of torque.
That’s useful because the Fusion Sport is no lightweight. Exiting a Glenn Brook Road hairpin, the V-6 grunts with exertion to keep the sedan’s porky 3,982 pounds (551 more than the base Fusion) moving. Continuously variable dampers — a cousin of the magnetic dampers that make GM’s performance cars such a joy to drive these days — help keep the big fella nimble.
Some of those added calories come from the Sport’s extra two cylinders and all-wheel drive. Other poundage comes from hood insulation and double-laminated glass that contribute to the 2017 Fusion’s biggest advance: a quiet, sophisticated interior.
Beginning at the Fusion’s SE trim (standard on Sport), the much-improved SYNC 3 system is available. SYNC’s console screen is quick to the touch, connects to my smartphone via Android Auto (CarPlay for you Appleheads), and displays its info in the instrument panel for safer, heads-up driving.
Transforming Fusion’s center console is an electronic rotary shifter. Its beauty is in what it adds — the aggressive, aforementioned SPORT button — and subtracts.
Eliminating hydraulic cables, the e-shifter also opens up the once-cramped console. The console storage bin is so deep it reaches to China, and a cave of space has opened under the dash screen big enough for spelunking. Add two cupholders and a roomy slot for my monster smartphone and you can have everything and the kitchen sink at your disposal.
Otherwise, Fusion’s dimensions are unchanged. I could sit behind myself in a backseat that is no Honda Accord-sized living room but comfortably average for the class. The Sport (you’ll know it by its unique mesh grille) is also joined in 2017 by an upscale Platinum trim, meaning the Fusion model line now runs from $22,610 to north of $42,000 — a $20,000 trim spread that is typical of lux models like Audi’s A4, for example.
With a growly voice, AWD and similar horsepower to Audi’s S4 sport trim model, think of Fusion as a roomier version of Audi’s S4 sports sedan. Sport even sports a unique LED light signature (Audi started this trend), ditching the standard Fusion “eyeliner” for an eyebrow LED. I would even go so far as to cross-shop against the Audi — especially as you can have the athletic Fusion for (cough) $18,000 less.
Take a good look in your rearview mirror the next time you hear a growly engine. That grille could be an Aston Martin. That menacing headlamp? An Audi. But when it roars past, you’ll note the Ford badge and think: I can afford that.
2017 Ford Fusion
specifications
| VEHICLE TYPE | FRONT-ENGINE, FRONT OR ALL-WHEEL DRIVE,
FIVE-PASSENGER SEDAN |
||||||||||||||||
| Power plant | 2.7-liter, twin-turbocharged V-6 (Sport model
as tested). Also available: 2.5-liter inline-4; 1.5-liter turbocharged inline-4; 2.0-liter, turbocharged inline-4; hybrid with 2.0-liter inline-4/battery assist; plug-in hybrid with 2.0-liter inline-4/7.6 kWh lithium-ion battery
|