Cold Fusion : 2008 Ford Fusion – A Profusion of Confusion

The Top Line
Looking for a sporty, but family-friendly sedan that won’t break your budget? Ford may have just the car for you. This trans-fusion of the Mazda 6 platform has a lot to offer for under $23,000, and narrows the gap, without quite bridging it, between the Fusion and the Japanese superstar sedans such as the Accord, Altima or Camry. It’s an enjoyable car to drive, although you are always left feeling that another 5 or 10hp wouldn’t hurt.

NOTE: This review covers the 3.0 litre V6 SE option.

Body Styles and Options

The Ford Fusion midsize sedan is offered in three trim levels: S, SE and SEL. The base S features 16-inch steel wheels, air-conditioning, a CD/MP3 player with auxiliary input jack for MP3 players, cruise control, full power accessories, keyless entry and a 60/40-split-folding rear seat. The SE which I drove adds alloy wheels, foglights, a six-way power driver seat, an upgraded six-speaker stereo with CD changer, audio controls on the steering wheel, a fancier internal trim and a fold-down front-passenger seat. The top of the line SEL includes 17-inch wheels, keyless-entry keypad, automatic headlights, automatic climate control, heated outside mirrors ,an auto-dimming rearview mirror and a compass.
Additional options include a moonroof, leather upholstery, an interior ambient lighting scheme (allows you to switch among seven colors for the footwells and console's cupholders), heated front seats, the Ford Sync system, an upgraded eight-speaker stereo, a DVD-based navigation system, satellite radio and a rear spoiler.
Also available is the Sport Appearance package that includes a black chrome grille, 18-inch alloy wheels, a sport-tuned suspension, a rear spoiler, chrome exhaust tips and red cabin accents (including leather seat inserts and stitching on the seats, console and steering wheel).

The Engine

The standard engine is a 2.3 litre, 4 cylinder, 160 horsepower with a five-speed manual transmission ; the automatic is an option. Ford don’t make a big deal of this in their advertsising or materials, but the engine is so clean that it meets California’s tough Partial-Zero Emissions Certification. The SE and SEL trim levels offer a 3.0 litre, 6 cylinder, 221 hp engine option which only comes as a six speed automatic. Unlike many automatic trannys nowadays, there is no “fake” manual option for the automatic shift.

Under normal driving conditions the gear shifts and acceleration are fairly smooth and quiet. However, if you stress the transmission the noise level ramps up and the acceleration isn’t so smooth and becomes positively noisy. The good news is that you can easily merge onto the interstate/freeway in heavy traffic and the Fusion passes the “oh sh!t” test, the bad news is you might miss 10-15 seconds of music on the radio.

Mileage is a respectable 18/26 mpg city/highway for the V6, and 20/28 for the standard 4 cylinder. My driving experience gave me around 24.5 mpg across a variety of driving conditions, including several 300 miles highway drives.

Handling

For a sedan the handling is quite sporty, to the point you find yourself throwing the car into curves a few mph faster than usual just to see what it does. The car sticks surprisingly well, even on adverse camber curves or in the rain. That was probably one of the major positive surprises in driving the the Ford Fusion. At a standard 55mph, both wind and road noise are barely noticeable, although road noise does pick up around 70mph with an annoying bass hummmmm.

The Interior

Ok – so the one thing that drives me crazy about the Fusion is that I have to look at the gear-shift to make sure I’m in the right gear. There is no display on the dashboard. Other than that, the controls are well laid out, although if you are test-driving one of these beasts, make sure you can correctly adjust the steering wheel to see the various dials and indicators.

The upgraded stereo, with Sync option, in the car, was pretty neat, and I liked the idea of being able to speak to my ipod and control the playlists. One irritation was that if you have unlabelled tracks on your ipod they are virtually unplayable through the Sync, and it gives you an error/warning message. The Sync also takes 5-6 minutes to fully read and index about 3,800 tracks and podcasts on my iPod.

The drivers seat is 6-way adjustable and provides adequate side, lumbar and thigh support. It may just be advancing age, but I certainly appreciated getting out of the car every two hours to stretch on a recent long drive down the eastern US coast.

One major plus of the Fusion is that the interior is spacious. There is ample room for the driver and front-seat passenger, plus you can comfortably fit three kids in the back , or three adults if they are on friendly terms with one another. The trunk is nearly 16 cu ft, and the rear seat can actually fold down to allow longer and bulkier items to be transported. I managed to fit three snowboards into the car that way.


Safety

Antilock disc brakes, front-seat side airbags and side-curtain airbags are standard issue . Traction control is optional on front-wheel-drive V6 models, but stability control is not available at all. A reverse parking sensor is an optional add-on.
The brakes are sharp and highly responsive, to the point where if you slam on the brakes, as I had cause to do thanks to some idiot in an BMW (is that an oxymoron?), the anti-lock rapidly kicks in and keeps you on the straight and narrow.

NHTSA Crash Test Results

Head-on accident Driver 5 stars
Head-on accident Passenger 5 stars
Side Impact Front 5 stars
Side impact Rear 4 stars
Rollover Rating 4stars

Offset Crash Tests Good

Reliability

The standard Ford warranty is still 3 years / 36,000 miles – although the powertrain has been bumped up to 5 years / 60,000 miles. Message boards and online review sites like KBB.com and Edmunds don’t reveal any nasty recalls or reliability problems. Certainly in the short time I had the car I experienced no problems.