Territory vs Territory
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Territory vs territory
Jonathan Hawley puts Ford's new Territory diesel through its paces on a 7666km journey from Melbourne to Darwin and back again.
A hallucination? I think so. It has been a long day.Without a chance to swerve, the Ford Territory's tyres go bump-thump over something long and brown, yet when I drive back expecting to see a squished python that until then had been minding its own snaky business, the road is empty.
So it was probably a join in the road surface, perhaps a shadow or a stick.
It is time to stop for a rest and a coffee. Yet the goal seems tantalisingly close: after three days of solid driving, I have brought the new diesel-powered Ford Territory from Melbourne to the upper reaches of the Northern Territory.
In a couple of hours, I would reach Darwin, having traversed the country south to north. Then I plan to turn around and repeat the trip, covering more than 7500 kilometres in the process.
If the idea is to get a good feel for the latest version of Ford's locally designed, engineered and built SUV, it has already succeeded. My bum feels like it is welded to the seat.
Road trips don't come much bigger than this, unless you circumnavigate Australia. That I make it back safely (although possibly a couple of kilograms heavier thanks to a growing addiction to Minties) is testament to a number of things. One is the Territory's ability to swallow vast distances in comfort.
We'll get to that soon.
The other is I do it alone, avoiding arguments about morning start times, toilet and meal stops, music choices and any other number of cabin fever-inducing excuses for an in-car dust-up.
My chosen steed is the diesel-powered, seven-seat, top-of-the-line Titanium version of the just-updated Territory. Although it's available with all-wheel-drive, we go for the rear-driven version with 60 kilograms less weight (although still a porky 2109 kilograms without driver or luggage), slightly taller gearing and not as much drag from the transmission for better fuel consumption.
The plan is to stick to the tarmac with a straight shot up the Stuart Highway, so all-paw mechanicals would have been superfluous anyway.
Despite the car going on sale this week, Ford has been dribbling information about the upgraded Territory steadily for months, so the basics are no surprise. Compared with the original version that appeared in 2004, this one has restyled front and rear ends, a new dashboard fascia and lots of detail changes to suspension, as well as a new electric power-steering system.
Then there's the diesel engine, which has been a long, long time coming and is crucial to the Territory's ongoing success (or otherwise) given so many rivals, from the Holden Captiva to the BMW X5, are available with oil-burning donks.
It's a 2.7-litre V6 with a single turbocharger, which is virtually identical to that used in the Land Rover Discovery 3 and revised guises of various Peugeot, Citroen and Jaguar models. The idea is to provide the Territory with lots of easily accessible pulling power, as well as improved fuel use over the 4.0-litre petrol version. To that end, it produces 440Nm of torque at 1900rpm (49Nm more at 1350rpm lower than the petrol), while quoted combined fuel use of 8.2 litres per 100 kilometres in the rear-driven diesel saves 2.4 litres of fuel for every 100 kilometres travelled.
Well, I have 76 of those 100-kilometre increments to verify that, so on a Saturday morning I climb into the shiny, metallic brown (Ford calls it Silhouette) Territory, zero the trip meter and head west.
The first section of the trip is best described as a transport stage - albeit a 740-kilometre one - from Melbourne to Adelaide on the way to emptier parts of the country. It is also a ''getting to know you'' session with the car, noting how eerily quiet the diesel V6 is at 100km/h, not to mention the lack of tyre and wind noise. How much smarter the Falcon-like dashboard looks compared with the old Territory's, especially with the Titanium's multifunction, touchscreen driver interface. And that with cruise control, a six-speed auto and oceans of torque, this big wagon feels like it would thunder along any straight-line piece of highway day and night with few demands on the driver.
Filling up north of Adelaide, the return is 7.6 L/100km - or a range of almost 1000 kilometres from the 75-litre tank. It all bodes well with 90 per cent of the trip still to come.
For now, the new drivetrain seems to fit the bill. The combination of turbo diesel power and an automatic gearbox means a hefty and instant amount of shove from a standstill and virtually none of the diesel clatter that might be expected.
If the petrol-powered six-cylinder Territory seemed a little sluggish in the past, this diesel should appeal more to people who enjoy driving.
Port Augusta is where the outback proper begins and the venue for the last traffic light for more than 1200 kilometres. Turn right and north onto the start of the Stuart Highway and, suddenly, instead of pastures and fences, it's all red dirt, cattle grids and stunted bushes. This late in the afternoon there is little traffic, just the odd road train and the ubiquitous Winnebago nomads settling for the night at roadside stops.
I decide to overnight at Woomera, eschewing the doubtful comforts of Spud's Roadhouse on the highway at Pimba and detouring a few kilometres to reach the comforts of that strange, government-built town that was home to Australia's 1950s and '60s rocket- and nuclear-testing programs. With a spanking new pub, pork chops on the menu and Coopers on tap, it is a grand finish to a big day's drive.
An hour before dawn the next day, it is raining and I am heading for Alice. A highway pounded by heavy trucks holds surprisingly large puddles and the Territory's high-beam performance isn't brilliant. Certainly not enough to laser a roo at 1000 metres. But the rain stops, the sun comes up, I fuel at Glendambo (51.3 litres used at 8.1L/100km, thanks to the higher 110km/h speed limit) and breakfast at Coober Pedy.
By mid-afternoon on the second day, I reach the Northern Territory. It looks pretty much like South Australia, apart from an impressive number of signs warning drivers of wildlife and road trains of up to 53.5 metres long - or about twice that of a B-double semitrailer.
The Territory - region, not car - used to have no speed limit on major roads such as the Stuart Highway but that has been pegged at 130km/h since 2007. It was the end of an era in high-speed Australian motoring and I expect to be disappointed but, surprisingly, don't mind at all.
Travelling at 130km/h on these mainly flat and wide-open roads feels very safe, while distances are devoured more rapidly than the 20km/h increase would indicate. The car feels more alive, working its suspension through sweeping bends instead of plodding resolutely along, and the extra tad of concentration needed keeps the mind sharp. Because the engine is working harder and the car is pushing more air, I'm using more fuel - about 10.0L/100km, which could start to get expensive.
Still, when I stop at Stuarts Well, about 90 kilometres south of Alice Springs, I find that Neil Waters, who owns the camel farm, is no fan of speed limits.
''I waited 20 years to buy a car like my Commodore SS and four months after I get it, they slap a speed limit on the road,'' he says. ''Now we have cops cruising down from Alice Springs just itching to nab you.''
Maybe he'd be interested in something more sensible, solid and economical as yonder Territory diesel, I opine.
''A Ford? Wouldn't take four of them for my Holden,'' he sniffs.
At 130km/h, I'm overtaking other cars, not being overtaken. It seems the days of faster cruising in the Northern Territory are long gone.
Alice Springs is much greener than I remember. That's due to nearly 400 millimetres of rain in four months, unusual in the ''dead'' centre that is now carpeted in grass, fresh shoots and other signs of life.
While talking to Mark, a self-professed car nut, we pop the bonnet and it dawns on us that this is the first locally built Ford with a V6 under the bonnet (as opposed to an in-line six) in 50 years of Falcon-based products. He wonders whether the Territory Titanium's intricate alloy wheels will fit his decade-old Falcon ute. I'm not inclined to help him find out.
It's another early start the next day. Too early, as it turns out, because I am unaware the NT does not have daylight savings, so I am on the road at 5.30am. It is just as well, because this is to be one very long experiment in fuel consumption. The instructions are to do the Alice to Darwin leg at no more than 100km/h, replicating fuel readings a Territory driver in other parts of the country might expect.
That's indescribably frustrating when, for once, another 30km/h can be added legally. It eventuates that the going is even slower, thanks to recent rain.
Creeks that are normally dry are flowing hard, the endless roadside ditch is brimming more often than not and there are actual lakes where desert might have been. Dips in the road are also full of water and the bitumen is broken by floods in places, so the 500 kilometres to Tennant Creek is a stop-start affair. The average speed and fuel economy suffer.
Time and distance begin to lose meaning as the day stretches on. The former, because I am an hour ahead of Territory time; the latter, because with so few landmarks and so little to do, I just keep going. Dunmarra? Only 300 kilometres away, it sounds like a good place to refuel. The car is coping admirably. Its high seating position gives an excellent view ahead and the seats provide no more aches and pains than expected.
The suspension gives a solid but far from uncomfortable ride quality and, as before, resists pitching and body roll better than many other high-riding SUVs.
The new electric power steering feels overly heavy but is of little concern on so straight a road.
My best friend is the centrally located colour screen - known as the ICC, or interior command centre - with its Bluetooth integration, plus USB connection for the talking books I had put on a memory stick before leaving. It's amazing how many hours of Stephen King's The Dark Tower you can digest when there is little else to do. (I recall something about a mysterious gunslinger plodding ceaselessly across a desert.)
Ford had warned me the ICC might act up, with our particular car being a pre-production version. True to form, it conks out a couple of times and I am suitably terrified by the prospect of no entertainment for days. Just to prove this trip isn't being paid for by Northern Territory Tourism, I arrive in Darwin after dark, sleep like a shot dog and leave before dawn (finally changing the clock in the car but not on my phone). Oh yes, fuel use: the definitive answer is if you stick to 100km/h with the aircon on, stopping regularly for food, toilet visits and flooded roads, expect 7.9L/100km from your diesel Territory over 1500 kilometres. Any disputes, try it yourself.
So, I turn around and head for home. The trip back is more entertaining, because I can lift the cruising rate to 130km/h and stop to look around. There are a lot of trees and anthills, numerous road trains and I don't make it off the highway to attractions such as Mataranka Springs, much less Kakadu.
However, it's the little things that can lift the spirits, such as stopping to chat with a bloke called Ashley who is working on the roads - or, at least, waiting for a road train full of dirt so he can build a levee and keep water off the road. I get him to drive the Territory through the water for a photo and he declares it ''very impressive, very nice'', at least, compared with his battered LandCruiser ute.
I meet two lots of police breath-testing in the middle of nowhere (one at 9.30am … or maybe it was 8.30am) and they seem more polite than some of their interstate colleagues, waving road trains through the roadblock: ''Watch out for them, mate, they take too long to stop'' is the call.
For two consecutive nights, I stay in camping grounds next to roadhouses. The first, at Wycliffe Well about 100 kilometres south of Tennant Creek, is the weirdest. It is the self-declared ''UFO capital of Australia'', with green aliens out front to drive the point home. I ask the proprietor if I am likely to see any if I get to the nearby Devils Marbles rock formations before dawn (I've given up on the alarm clock).
''Absolutely, it's the No.1 spot where people see UFOs all the time!'' she enthuses while her helper, a backpacker from Marseille of all places, rolls her eyes. The only alien life forms I see the next morning are packing up their spacecraft, which looks suspiciously like a Mitsubishi Pajero towing a caravan. It is clearly going to be a long trip home to Alpha Centauri.
Back through Alice Springs, past Woomera, then Port Augusta, Adelaide and home. It takes almost seven days to cover the 7666.1 kilometres (if you trust the trip meter) but what do I learn about the new diesel Ford Territory?
First, that it has all the attributes that made its predecessor so attractive: space for plenty of luggage with the third row of seats folded, as well as a nice balance of ride and dynamic ability.
The diesel engine adds accessible performance but, more importantly, lower fuel consumption. On this trip, it averages 9.1L/100km, so it is no Prius, and around town it would use a lot more.
The cleaner-looking dashboard presentation brings it up to date but, unlike others in the Drive office, I'm not sold on the exterior restyle, which looks more cluttered than the original. The steering feels heavier than it should but lacks nothing in feedback and communication.
Nevertheless, the Territory diesel is amply at home on this kind of journey. Should anyone else be inclined to give it a crack, do not be dissuaded by Australia's distances. The Territory swallows them as it swallows occupants and gear, except now it manages to swallow less fuel in the process.
Log book
Total distance: 7666km
Time taken: 6.5 days
Total driving time: 79 hours, 39 minutes
Fuel use: 694 litres
Average fuel use: 9.1L/100km
Best fuel use: 7.0L/100km (Ararat to Melbourne)
Worst fuel use: 10.4 L/100km (Darwin to Daly Waters)
Most expensive fuel: $1.94 (Daly Waters)
Paying the premium
A diesel engine is the big news for Ford's updated Territory but it comes with a $3250 price premium over the petrol engine that continues as a two-wheel-drive price leader.
The time taken to pay off the diesel will depend on diesel prices, which hover around those of petrol.
Claimed average fuel use for the new V6 turbo diesel Territory is 8.2 litres per 100 kilometres for the two-wheel-drive model and 8.8L/100km for 4WD variants.
At today's petrol and diesel prices of a little less than $1.50 a litre, the diesel should cost about $1845 to fuel annually, whereas the petrol would be $2385 (assuming 15,000 kilometres travelled).
That means the Territory diesel would save $540 a year and it would take about six years to pay off the difference.
However, if fuel prices rise, the savings for the diesel could increase.
Then there's the prospect of potentially better resale values for the diesel, which would mimic the experience of other family and luxury soft-roaders.
TOBY HAGON
A return to familiar territory
In 2004, Drive took the then-new Ford Territory on another outback adventure to the Northern Territory - but it was a trip of a very different nature.
Instead of smooth bitumen roads, we hit the tough tracks from Cameron Corner to Birdsville and across to the north of Alice Springs before returning home via the Oodnadatta Track after covering more than 4000 kilometres.
We compared the all-wheel-drive Territory with the Toyota Kluger of the day and the now-extinct Holden Adventra. That Territory was similar to today's, sharing the same basic structure and interior, but came with a 182kW petrol six-cylinder engine and a four-speed auto.
It didn't fare well on rough roads. A lack of ground clearance meant the underbody was pummelled by rocks and it was constantly bottoming out on roads the Kluger and Adventra handled relatively easily.
On the positive side, the driving manners on smooth dirt and bitumen were exemplary and the amount of interior space and storage options well-thought-out. These attributes continue in the new Territory.
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