2021 Ford Everest Pricing and Specs

Believe it or not, this is perfectly normal behaviour from many modern vehicles with eight, nine or even 10-speed automatic transmissions. It’s even more common with torquey turbo-diesel engines which can jump one or even two gears on a light throttle without affecting performance. Put simply, there are more gears on offer than the vehicle actually needs. Don’t forget, once upon a time, a three-speed transmission was quite common.

So why have nine or ten gears in the first place? Because when the vehicle is heavily loaded or towing three tonnes of caravan, those extra gears come in very handy for keeping the engine in its torque zone and ensuring it can still go up hills at highways speeds and take off from a red light without over-exerting itself. And when cruising on the highway, the vehicle can select a really high gear and lower its engine speed, which reduces fuel consumption markedly.

Both two and four-wheel-drive variants of the Everest have identical towing limits of 3000kg with a braked trailer. So, on paper, there’s nothing to split them as tow-cars. And the reality is that a rear-wheel-drive vehicle should be a terrific tow-car, especially one like the Everest which is fairly heavy itself and has tough suspension and plenty of brakes.

The complications start when you tell me you want to use the vehicle to tow `mainly on road’. That suggests to me that there’ll be times when you may not be on sealed roads. At which point, the extra grip of the all-wheel-drive Everest might prove to be the difference between getting to where you want to go and not getting there at all. All-wheel-drive really comes into its own when the surface you’re driving on is less than perfectly grippy. Towing a caravan at the time only makes that difference greater and, when you’re half way along a dirt road and it starts to rain, that all-wheel-drive will be worth its weight in gold.

Products such as paint coatings and upholstery treatments are often not much more than a way for the car dealership to squeeze a few (sometimes quite a few) more dollars out of you. Don’t tell me, let me guess: Once you’d agreed on the car, colour, options and price, you were led to another office where a sales rep offered you these miracle products that would keep your car looking new forever and without which, it would be a shambles in just months. Am I close?

I’m not saying that some of the better products don’t work, and they certainly shouldn’t harm your car’s appearance, but ask yourself this: If a car maker cannot, in 2021, sell you a car that has high quality, long-lasting exterior paint, do you really want that car in the first place? If something as fundamental as the paint is questionable, what else is going to go wrong with the thing? And if the paint does somehow degrade through normal day-to-day exposure, the new-car warranty should cover it anyway. There could be exceptional cases (such as using the car underground in a mine, or parking it next to a railway line every day of its life where it will be constantly showered with small, rusty metallic particles) but for a normal car living a normal life, these dealership add-ons are a very dubious prospect.