Friends :
Back from a holiday to Kerala where Blue Bombardier ensured we covered all terrain from Wild life sanctuary to Mountains to Back-waters to Beach
It performed flawlessly and brought us back home safe and sound
Odo-reading before heading out for our trip
Odo-Reading after reaching back home
Now I think would be the right time to share a detailed feedback about the performance of Aspire as I have now covered nearly 7000kms out of which last nearly 3000kms covered in 10-days road-trip to Kerala where the Aspire has been driven on possibly every tarmac that you can name it. It went through a blistering pace on highways, treaded carefully on rocky and horrible patches and took corners with aplomb.
During this phase, it made me fully aware about it's true potential and capabilities
With that as a backdrop, let me dwell a little deeper on each of the performance aspect of Aspire that might help folks contemplating in buying this car
Engine :
As we all have either read or experienced it in person, Aspire's true performance lies directly with its engine. It's butter smooth, powerful and due to it's almost zero turbo lag makes it a super pleasure car to drive. It definitely has power in lower gears but, what matters is the tremendous amount of power that is available even in higher gears. Here, I am talking about 4th and 5th gear.
During this drive, many a times, this engine made me realized that there should have been an additional cog as i was caught many times unawares that I am in 5th gear and tried further up shifting. As long as your not below 50kmph and in 5th gear, a gentle tap is what is needed to get a rush of power for those overtaking maneuvers. In fact, 90% of my overtaking on highways was in 5th gear. I like to drive reasonably fast without compromising any safety aspects.
It's blistering fast and picks up speeds so fast that you can create a distance between you and others cars within a few seconds and adding a few more seconds to this would make them faint blobs in your ORVM and this certainly was not what I was expecting and made me pleasantly happy.
In short, Aspire can keep up with C and a few D segment sedans/SUVs too. And, post this drive, this car reminded me of Cruze so much that I started comparing to it. Aspire is almost in same league of a Cruze with respect to performance and I would say handles better than the Cruze (Why you will know as you read further)
Being an ex-owner of a Cruze and someone who was completely besotted with it, is truly a great compliment to the Aspire
Well, the only difference is Cruze would reach its top speed with no sound seeping through the cabin while, the Aspire engine gets noisy post higher triple digit speeds and engine sounds little buzzy but, there is absolutely no strain to engine and it effortlessly pulls till a much much higher speeds. I have a feeling due to lighter body shell, insulation is not good and engine sound post that speed seeps into the cabin and it does get little intrusive and slightly mars the overall pleasurable drive but, is something that can be easily overcome by playing some music to drown that buzzy sound. Otherwise, it's just a brilliant engine and you can have a lot of fun with it !!!
Handling :
Well, Well. This is what impressed me the most other than that powerful engine. Being my first FORD, I was not entirely familiar with its handling though have driven the Fiesta S, Fiesta TDCI, Figo a few times. The tyre change has really benefited the car and it shows. Now it's rock solid at most speeds and gave us a plush ride throughout our trip. Steering though is light at slow speeds begins to tighten quite a bit at high speeds and it does need little pressure to guide it while lane changing etc. It gives reasonably good confidence at higher speeds
During this trip, we were travelling from Munnar to Kumarkom, there is a particular stretch of 70kms or so which if people are aware is simply one of the best roads to drive with S-bends every 300-500 meters for nearly 50+ kms of beautiful tarmac and covered with dense foliage on both sides.
Here, I bumped into a Cruze being driven aggressively and I was on it's tail for nearly 40+ kms on those S bends. I could see him totally surprised by how the smaller car would gain on him on bends and still come out faster to be right behind his tail despite the fact he was wee bit faster on straights. Aspire was easily able to keep up with a 150BHP car on those completely twisty roads and gained my full respect for it's superb handling. Though never owned a FORD before, Now I can only imagine, how the older fords would have been with respect to handling.
Brakes :
Brakes behave little quirky. Sometimes they have too much bite and sometimes they just dont grab as much. I reckon one of our members ( on official thread) was recommending that modulating is the key and now i know what he was referring to and I picked up that style during this road-trip. Panic braking didn't work and I had at least 3-4 of such instances where the ABS saved the situation
1. Dog jumped the divider from right and I had to brake and swerve to left and I was doing 100kmph + and not for a single moment the tyres squealed, nor locked or fish-tailed. I braked gently and swerved to left and car went on that line smoothly and I corrected the steering to right to come back on track. Thankfully, the dog stopped in it's tracks and we all were fine.
2. On some back-road, I took a wide right hander faster than I should have and suddenly see a herd of buffaloes on road. I thought I will drive straight into them. But, yet again, I gripped the steering, braked gently on and off and steered to where ever there was a gap. car slowed down to almost 30kmph and I just grazed a buffaloe and I heard the slight "THUD" on left rear door. I didn't even stop and drove on and next pit-stop, i causally checked. Believe you me, not even a dent or scratch. Brilliant
3. Couple of instances of people crossing the road on Bangalore highway, And I was at 100+ and both times, I braked gently to correct steering and then accelerated instead of braking to avoid this panic situation. ABS in these situations also helped and no drama at all of tyres squealing/fish tail etc. I prefer accelerating over braking in similar scenarios (if scenario permits)
Have to confess that I am impressed with it's braking ability. And, Like i said if you simply stand on brakes, it won't give you the desired output. You'll have to modulate the brakes and it works really well and stops the car pretty good
Gears :
Gearshifts have really smoothened out by now (7000kms) and though it's not short and precise shift like Cruze or butter smooth like Hyundai's but, there is nothing really to complain about it's shifting quality except for two scenarios
3rd to 2nd : There is always a chance to miss this shift and as you drive more these misses keep reducing. Now I know the trick and almost never miss it. Initial days, I was having a bit of a trouble here
Reverse : This is still a bit of a problem. If you half-clutch, it won't slot in but, if you are not too lazy and depress the clutch fully,chances are you will never miss the reverse gear and slot it in first instance
I almost never use the 1st gear, it's like a dummy gear for me
.....Even from standstill you can get back into motion in 2nd gear
My style of driving (especially on highway) is to up-shift quickly till 4th and then enjoy the thrust in 4th and 5th gear for most of the highway drive. The corners (S-bends) that I was describing that were taken mostly in 4th or 5th gear and none of bends ever saw the 3rd gear. So, you can imagine the torque or power availability of Aspire. I can tell you with confidence there are few cars that can corner those twisties in 4th and 5th gear with agility and confidence
FE :
Now this might not be of interest to most of us ( definitely least interest for me). During the 3000kms+ road trip out of which I was driving pedal to metal nearly 80% of the time with 100% AC. FE that I got was as follows :
Best FE : 18kmpl
Worst FE : 15.75kmpl
Headlamps :
This is one of the sore areas of the Aspire. It's headlamps are simply insufficient for highway driving at night. I had to practically shove my face into the windscreen to get a better view of roads ahead. Lights throw and reach is not enough and I will be upgrading the bulbs to 90/100 sometime soon. These lights didn't even give me confidence to drive at 100kmph at night on a highway like Bangalore-Hyderabad. Enough said !!!
RPM :
Most of the torque and power is between 2000rpm-3000rpm. There is absolutely no need to even cross 2500rpm for 90% of day to day driving and considering the long revv range of 5000 rpm (redline), it gives a relaxed feeling even when your pushing the car aggressively
To summarize, Aspire is a "Fun-to-Drive" fast car and I am loving every bit of this ownership