gz1

Finally picked up my new ghia AWD.
Lightning strike, with third row seats, towpack and side rails.
First impressions are great, great car, great driving and really glad I chose this over the adventra.
Things I didn't like:
Pre-delivery. Come on ford dealers lift your act!. anyone from ford listening here, something desperately needs to be done. pre-delivery is atriocious. If this keeps up I'm going back to holden as soon as they can make a decent car. No wonder commodore sales are that much ahead of falcon. Nothing to do with the cars i suspect.
The clock. Another thread discusses this so I won't go any further.
The rear parcel shelf. It's made of lead and impossible to fit without scratching the trim. Also can't be used with the third row up and there is no-where to store it. A serious design flaw here. What if you need to use the third row seats when you are not at home? where do you store the damn thing? I haven't seen anything about this on the forums, so am I missing something? I guess it was designed by the same dimwit that made the clock.
apart from the above the whole car is just terrific. would highly reccomend it and have. in fact there are 3 others from my team that have bought terries. One picked up yesterday, I got mine today and the other two in two and three weeks respectively.
On the first day I clocked up 200 k's with an avarage for the trip of 21.9l/100km. Not a bad effort for a new car. I was told to expect high fuel usage in the first 3000 k's but this inot as bad as I was expecting.
Got a trip to the blue mountains planned for sunday to see if I can fins any nice AWD spots. anyone here have any suggestions?
thanks all

Organza

hey gz1 .... welcome to the T family. Hope you have a great ongoing experience with your pride and joy.

But .....

can't agree with you on your two gripes.

The clock. You'll get used to it very quickly and other than it lacks a dimming function .... I reckon you'll quite like its position in the not too distant future.

The Parcel Shelf. I think you have to accept a level of forward planning is required. For "most" people .... I figure you buy the 7 seater because you either need it all the time or on the odd occasion need the flexibility to carry 6 or 7.

If you are the former, the seats are usually up and set because you need it all the time, so why would you have the parcel shelf in the car most of the time? It'd be in the garage at home most of the time.

If you are in the latter category, the seats are likely to be stowed and folded away .... so you can carry more in the back ... most of the time .... and adjust as best you can when called upon to carry 6 or 7. With knowledge of when you need the extra capacity .... you take the parcel shelf out before your trip.

Of course, its not perfect .... but it is not right to blame the "dimwit" at Ford for designing it that way. Having said that I'm sure the ppl at Ford would love to know your solution to the problem that will satisfy 100% of the people, 100% of the time.

Mate ... enjoy the car ....

gz1

Fair enough Organza, I probably will get used to the clock, so fair cop.
But on the parcel shelf I can see that it would have been very easy to make it fold back so it stows behind the third seat when it up. Only would have taken a minor change in the internal trim to allow this. Since I use the third row during the weekend and need the extra space during the week it's a real pain for me. It's not a real option to leave it out as it leaves evarything in the "boot"in plain view. And the real point is that you don't always have the knowledge that you will be carrying an extra person or two in advance ;-).
Anyhow thanks for your comments.
cheers

Territory

Congrats on joining the T family.
This forum has already decided the fate of The Clock.
Cargo shelf is strong so you can stack stuff on it while going through the gear in the back
Probably a better solution would have been to have a stowage location for it in the T but didnt manage to achieve this.

Paulv

The big problem seems to be that it's so wide that you can't store it anywhere when you take it off. This width also makes it hard to remove without scratching the plastic or your window tinting.

new2ford

Another satisfied customer, that's good!

I raised the parcel shelf issue on this forum many months ago as one of the original buyers who chose to get the shelf with 7 seats. Organza you need to realise that some of us have reasons for having both the shelf and the 3rd row that revolve around the car being mostly used as a 5 seater with the 3rd row coming into use on unexpected occasions (e.g. the kids suddenly tell you they want to bring friends home).

I don't think the problem is without a solution. Our former Barina had the shelf designed so that it slotted in neatly behind the back row seat back when not in use. To come up with the Territory I think Ford is full of very clever people at the moment - definitely no dimwits - so somebody at Broadmeadows should be able to design a solution (as well as increasing the size of those cuts outs at the rear of the shelf to accommodate the 3rd row seatbelts).

gz1

Yes very satisfied thanks. Would definetly reccomend this car to everyone. And yes Ford is full of clever people to design this, that's why a shorfall in design like this parcel shelf sticks out like a sore thumb. The attention to detail in the rest of the car is so great that I'm sure it up there with the best of them. and missing out on a detail that is very easy to fix, is well err I've said enough.
I wonder if any after market guys are reading this and can come up with something.

jemmex

Most blue mountians 4wd tracks are fenced off behind padlocks,
you could take a short trip out glenraphael drive on narrow nck (between scenic railway and the cahills look out. Also mount hay road used to be open (turn north at leura primary school) or try bedford creek at woodford.

Cheech

And get ready to have dust coming out the back and pooling in the tailgate
for the next few weeks !

Took mine off road ( nothing serious ) 2 weeks ago and even after using a compressed air gun its still coming out the back.

Ouzo

Agree with you on the shelf - for once I am looking after a vehicle and the scratches on the rear trim from removing the shelf are pretty ugly - the only blemish so far - annoying.

My 7 seat AWD Ghia is consistently returning 13 -14 l/100k after 8000km - an improvement of around 3 l/100k from new. PULP helps a bit too.