Ouzo

Very happy with mine. Trade the Outback - you'll love the Terri

 

lordricey

I traded my 2001 Outback for a Territory - so I am in a good place to comment.

The build quality of the Ford is no where near as good as the Subaru. From my experience, neither is there after sales service. But I may have just hit a bad dealer as others disagree.

The reason I traded was for size. I have been generally happy with the Ford but I don't love it. I owned 3 Subarus prior to this car and loved them all. There are a lot of little things that will probably annoy you but I'll let you discover them for yourself as I don't want to taint your new car experience.

One big tip is - sell the Subaru privately. Mine had 50,000k's on it and Ford only offered me $19k for it. Sold it privatley for $23,500. Could have got more if I had wanted to wait but I sold it to the first guy that looked at it.

To get comparable inclusions as the Subaru you have to look at the Ghia or at least TS. Make sure you drive the model you want to get and then spec it up before delivery if you need to.

One other thing you will notice is that it will use about 40-50% more fuel than the Subaru for the same driving. (Just warning you)

Ouzo

Just to add my 2 bobs worth on the Subaru question. My wife has an Impreza which is 4 months older than my Territory. The build quality is better but not to a huge degree. They are both fine vehicles.

I test drove the latest Outback in my search for a new vehicle. Nice package with good performance but even apart fom the size issue I still preferred the Territory - the high revving 5 speed auto Outback seemed to be changing gear all the time which annoyed the crap out of me.

bfmp

thank you all for no help

just wondering what can be done
ie no dealer help at this stage
do you go back to ford and have a winge or is that aceptable as per the photos

please help

WELDERJEFFO

Honestly, I'd call it "acceptable"....even though it's not......they just don't make stuff the way they used to, and they never will, nor will they ever lift a finger to make us happy.

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Don't own a Ford, but I've worked on quite a few.

Brent-EA Ghia

Id have a winge! If the car had been in an accident and came back from the repairer and looked like that they would have to fix it! its not right that it comes from factory like that.

Brent.

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EA Fairmont Ghia - Restoring , EA Falcon GL/S-pack - Driving

WELDERJEFFO

That's what everyone would like to do....but what good will come from it? Neither the factory or the dealer will give you a discount or a refund, they don't give a rats ass about us or a few misalignments in their product. There are 50 more anxious customers coming through their doors for every one customer who is pissed....
After enough bitching, the service garage might make a feeble attempt to fix it, but probably will make it worse or have something else fall apart during or after the process, and in the meanwhile, we get dicked around waiting or renting a P.O.S. to get around in while they sit there and scratch their heads.
In my view, it's a waste of precious time and energy that could be better well spent on friends and family, or something else that is less stressful on my heart and overall health.
We'd be better off to order up a cold brew at the pub and bitch about it to our mates, so they don't fall into the same state of discontent that we have.

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Don't own a Ford, but I've worked on quite a few.

lordricey

With all respect I disagree. Part of having a protected car industry is that we really are expected to support it and as such a lot of us will buy Aussie made cars in the future.

If we all roll over and say - "it'll do" we'll never get anywhere. I must admit I'm not a very good dealer pesterer becasue it is not exactaly easy to drop my car off every week to get something fixed. But that doesn't mean I don't ask when I'm in there.

I currently have a list of about 6 things for them to fix when I drop it in next month. And it keep taking it back every moth until they are fixed....

RAPTOR

The windscreen pillar bit is exactly the same on mine and there are a few interior trim pieces that could be better aligned but I'm resigned to the fact that it is acceptable to Ford and pestering them to change it will just cause me stress that I don't need.

It's a direct result of how much car you want for the dollar and how many examples the company is making to allow them to address these issues. If your a global player like Subaru then there is the volume and market expectation that you achieve a certain standard, which is higher than where Ford are at present with the Territory.

If your only making 20-30,000 examples a year for purely local consumption in a car that's keenly priced for the size and equipment than these types of things just aren't going to get addressed.

Besides that I'd just as soon have a go myself to correct some of this than let the service guys stuff it up even more.

Bassman

My 2 bobs, Spend the extra 60 grand to get something that has 2mm panel gaps instead of 5 mm if it bothers so much.