overall the car looks great, regardless.

 

I think this car looks fantastic. The front end is perfect.

 

i still like the '11-12 models in terms of styling. Overall its a good looking car on par with the new mazda6 , but it looks as big as the taurus. hopefully it does better than its predecessor.

IMO these family sedan was wars are pretty intense. Luckily I'm not in the market for one atm, cause i sure as hell wouldn't know what to buy

 

Jonathan Welsh of the Wall Street Journal had a glowing review of the 2013 Fusion Hybrid (and how it is a Prius beater) after driving it home 15 miles from his Manhattan office and netting a whopping 26 MPG. Really? 26MPG is going to compete with Prius?

 

we have a saying in my language - they are doing Ford a "bear favour", as in no favour at all.. It happens with every new product from detroit... it happened with Taurus which was MT's Car of the Year, it happened to old Fusion and it will continue happening.

In MT comparo their 1.6l Turbo Ecoboost got worse mpg than Camry 2.5l AR and every other car they tested. And it was slower too.

 

I sent the author an email and the MPG has been corrected to read 46 MPG.

 

No, that's incorrect. The Malibu got more than 3.5 MPG less but it did score less than the rest of the cars.

However out of the six cars tested only three actually got a test average MPG that was as good as or better than their *city* MPG. The Fusion missed by .1 MPG, the Camry beat by 1.1 MPG and the Passat beat by 3.5 MPG . The other three didn't even really match their city MPG though missing by .7 (Malibu, Altima) and 1.2 MPG (Accord).

Ultimately a stupid comparison as the Ford was the only manual of the group and it's gearing is stupid being the only one of the group to run over 2000 RPM (2200) at 60 MPH (1550 for the Altima number for a 4 banger)

WRT Ford Fusion MPG in general, I've been underwhelmed by the MPG numbers (by all but the Hybrid) ever since Ford published them but if they get close to the other cars in real world driving I think the TQ characteristics of the turbo engine will be a good fit for most drivers (0-40) grocery run type sprints.

 

Just as I expected ........ Ford is simply unable to build a non hybrid that gets decent gas mileage. Look at these joke figures from consumer reports magazine March 2013 issue.

Ford Titaniuma Turbo & and standard engine both gets worse gas mileage and much worse acceleration than a 3.5LV6 Camry (same engine as a Lexus ES350) or the Accord in their overall test of real world (not EPA lab) gas mileage:

Camry V6 26mpg
Accord V6 26mpg

Fusion 1.6 I4 Turbo 25mpg
Fusion 2.0 I4 Turbo 22mpg

 

This is a seriously good mid-sized sedan, especially in the chassis engineering. Overall, IMO, it is one of the best Ford products in years, but there do seem to be a few teething problems on the assembly-line. Consumer Reports recently tested three versions all (early-production samples) and, while giving the car a lot of praise in general, commented on the numerous fit/finish problems, particularly with several body panels not aligning properly (I would guess like that hood-gap in the image above). They also were not impressed with the MyTouch system or the performance/economy of the EcoBoost engines, compared to their larger non-turbo predecessors.

However, I recently test-drove a Hybrid (did a partial write-up, but not a full-review), and didn't notice any significant problems....and the Candy-Apple-Red paint job was excellent. The Hybrid, of course, also has a different drivetain than the gas-only Ecoboost models, and avoids some of those shortcomings.