Motor Trend Offers Long-Term Review of Ford Fusion Hybrid

From Motor Trend (2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid Year-Long Review):

How times change. It wasn't long ago that the consensus of the esteemed experts in our business was that America was no longer able to build an affordable, well-constructed sedan. Lengthy editorial columns were devoted to the problem, all pretty much saying we'd abandoned what was perhaps the seminal product of the 20th century, the thing that made Ike's Interstate highway system make sense, and together, modern America.

The skillset had been quietly sold off, subcontracted, outsourced, lost somewhere in the paperwork while Detroit refocused on more important things, like rebate schemes. Cradling their heads in their hands, my knowing colleagues lamented, "Why can't this country build a Camry or an Accord?"

Well, it turns out they're right. We can't build a Camry or an Accord. No, to everyone's surprise, the folks in Dearborn created something maybe even better, the Ford Fusion Hybrid-such as the light ice-blue metallic one before you that recently concluded its 12-month stay here.

To cut to the chase, it whined and regen'd and cut the engine at stops (and restarted it) and all those other hybrid things for 23,475 faultless miles.

It also did something extraordinary for a Motor Trend long-termer: When it left, we actually liked it better than when it arrived. And when our weekly signout sheet of test cars finally appeared without the Fusion's name, many of us muttered "nuts" and "heck" and occasionally worse.

We've had plenty of American long-term cars around here, and even if they didn't expensively fail big time, or inexpensively small time, by return time they were old beyond their age. There's a disease called Werner syndrome that causes terribly accelerated aging in humans. For a while, its automotive strain was absolutely epidemic in Detroit.

However, our Fusion aged better than gracefully. And that includes, you perceptively ask, its newfangled electromechanical hybrid bits. There wasn't a single problem. Nada. Which brings us to the point in the program where we normally roll up our sleeves and go into all the gory details about what went wrong and the horrifying costs. And so here goes for the Fusion Hybrid: (cue thunder bolts and whistling winds).

The oil was changed three times, as were the tires rotated. Two hundred and eighteen bucks and eighteen cents. That was it.

Read entire article here.

Visit Lakewood Fordland to find out more about the Ford Fusion Hybrid.