New Fusion Owner Pics and Impressions

[sbellarosa]

Just picked mine up today. I can't believe how many questions/comments I've gotten about it having only had it for about four hours!

 

IMG_20130304_131811.jpg

I've only seen two out on the roads so far this year. One hybrid the other day. I would guess they will be common by the end of the year, but so far they are very rare.

[Iggnutts]

I suck at parallel parking. Last weekend I had the opportunity to use park assist for the first time since getting my FFH almost 2 months ago. Was in Columbus for the Arnold Fitness Fair.

 

It worked perfectly! I was stunned and quite pleased!

[MKII]

2013 Fusion Titanium with "Y-spoke" wheels.

 

 

Love those wheels. Have not seen those since the Fusion debut. Very classy & premium looking.

[d-rail]

Sterling grey

 

I have the same exact color and wheels is your AWD?

[B8BB8B]

Absolutely AWD - need that in my winter mountainous home!

[d-rail]

Absolutely AWD - need that in my winter mountainous home!

got a coulple of nice snows this year what little I drove it in the snow did real well

[bluspikez]

Heat, fishing line, and Goo Gone. In that order. They came off very easy since the car is only a few months old (built 11-21).

 

I debadged my car today (leaving the EcoBoost one, though), and like in RRF's case the letters came off quite easily. I was going to wait for spring to do mine, but decided to do it today after bumping one of the letters in "fusion" while washing the car and knocking the letter crooked. I just used dental floss, my fingers and Goo Gone on mine to get the letters and the tape/adhesive off, then finally buffed it back to being smooth.

 

Here's a couple photos I snagged from removing the "titanium" lettering. After popping off the letters with the floss, the majority of the tape stays behind, looking like this:

 

 

I then just rubbed/scraped the majority of this off with my fingers/nails, which left me with this:

 

 

And finally, after removing the adhesive with Goo Gone, picking up the leftovers with some Bug & Tag remover, and buffing out any remaining stuff with rubbing compound, it's like the letters were never there!

 

Edited March 10, 2013 by bluspikez

[dwmilton]

I love my 1.6 EB SE after 1 1/2 weeks of ownership! Acceleration is acceptable, and the handling & ride are much better than I expected.

 

 

Smokey & Froggy

 

 

Smokey after tint & Eclipse SunShade install

 

My girl did some things in the past I can't discuss without her permission.

[Tommyjr_]

Hello everyone. I got my fusion in January on the 2nd. So far I've added tint and wheels.

 

[KS1]

That's a sharp looking car Tommy

[okaydave]

Great review...cant wait for mine!

[Scooter80]

Well, my wife and I finally took delivery of our 2013 Bordeaux Reserve Metallic Fusion Energi Titanium. Thats a mouthful. A big, grinning ear to ear mouthful!

 

Now, I drive what I think is a pretty damn nice car, a 2006 Audi A6 4.2L Quattro, pretty much loaded, and maybe its just the new car feel, the tightness of a new car, the new smell or something similar, but I am extremely jealous that my wife will be behind the wheel of our newest addition the majority of the time. Super jealous.

 

This car drives so nice! The lane keeping is REALLY cool. I was giggling like a school girl while the car was bouncing line-to-line. Certainly not meant to drive itself, but very effective in keeping within the lane. Being my car was built Feb 9th, I appear to have gotten a job2 build, hence no aluminum pedals and no touch-sensitive moonroof controls. Not too disappointed with either as the moonroof buttons are really unobtrusive, and nicely recessed in the panel. The pedals would have been a nice touch, but lets face it, they are down where you shouldn't be looking when you're driving anyways. As most who've taken delivery have said, the trunk is small but definitely usable for many more things than I was anticipating. We made a Costco trip on the way home (::gasp:: on a Saturday?!?!) and had no issues schlepping things in.

 

I have yet to get the iOS PHEV app working. The app kept telling me there was a communication issue and to contact such and such if it continues. I'll keep working on that.

 

We had 21 EV miles listed when we took off from the dealer, but a few parking lot stops to play with things depleted that sooner than normal in the sub-freezing temps today. I can't say enough about the drive-train. When we first needed the ICE about 15 miles in, we had the radio up only in the slightest and I COULD NOT tell when the ICE actually kicked in. Very smooth and quiet. Now as we drained the EV range even more, the ICE did get higher revving and more noisy, but nothing terrible as some report with hybrids and/or CVTs. The different gauge options on the left-hand mini-screen are really cool and it is quite easy to see exactly what is going on with the car and drivetrain.

 

Still haven't played much with all the electronics and fun stuff. That will have to wait for tomorrow. For now it is feeding at home on its included charger. My wife is on 3rd shift tonight and I want it to get a decent charge before she takes off. The included charger leaves something to be desired. It is a tidy package, but I can see how it would become a real pain to wind and unwind each time between charging as is required by the OEM, so I will likely be adding an L2 EVSE to the garage sooner rather than later so she can just use the 120v at work while she's on her 12's. Her work offered to look into getting an L2 in the parking lot, but we haven't heard anything in a few weeks. That would be awesome! But for now we are hoping there's just a 120v somewhere close she can use.

 

Oh, I was so excited to talk about the car, I forgot to mention the delivery process. So from the beginning, I got real lucky on finding this car as it is exactly what my wife and I decided we'd order when we started looking mid-February. It just so happened a dealer in the area had ordered it in November and it was built Feb 9th. We made the purchase, putting down a deposit on the 19th of Feb. We were told it'd be there in about two weeks, but that didn't happen. Another week went by and we were told it was on a train in New Mexico. This week came and it was dropped at the trucking company Wednesday night, so they called and said they'd likely have it Thursday. No dice there either. They got a couple truckloads of cars in that time but ours wasn't one. Salesman called Friday around 11 and said they finally got it. Of course they did! We couldn't go Friday! Anyways, we took delivery of it today, Saturday. We got there and the salesman said he had it waiting in the service drop-off for us to check over. I checked the paint really well in the good lighting in the service bay since I had seen some posts on BlueOval about bad paint jobs. Ours is perfect. We also noticed a couple of hand written signs placed on the front bumper and the dash stating "DO NOT INSTALL FRONT PLATE BRACKET" LOL. That was something we hounded our salesman on. Though its law in Illinois, we really dislike the look of the front plate, especially on this car and my Audi. Most police I know won't write you for it anyways. They might pull you over for it, but they likely won't write you. AAAAnyways, he certainly followed through on that request! My wife also asked the porter to move her low-profile plate frame from our trade onto the Fusion, thus removing the advert frame that is so obtrusive IT should be outlawed. We did take note of the ugly dealer sticker on the decklid too, but decided not to bother them with that as I'm pretty good at removing those with her hairdryer! Now back inside to finalize the purchase.

 

We took advantage of the $1,500 rebate and I had finally gotten a bunch of the $750 Private cash coupons from the plethora of brochures I ordered after I panicked about having thrown one away just before deciding to make this purchase. OOOps! But it turned out they didn't need it in-hand anyways. If you've ever gotten one, they will likely apply it to your purchase just by looking up your name and address in their rebate system. Just make sure you tell them about it as my salesman neglected to offer it even though it was likely listed when he was looking up the $1500 rebate. Cool beans, no trouble there. We had already negotiated the price weeks prior, so this was supposed to be pretty painless. We had also already secured financing outside of the dealer, but of course the Finance Manager had to try to sell us on theirs so that took a little bit to shut him down. He also tried the extended warranty sell. No thanks, just not for me. A bunch of papers later and we were walking outside with our salesman so he could "teach" us how to use the car. Oh boy! heeeere we go.

 

I consider myself quite tech savvy and have taken delivery of my share of new cars, most pretty tech-heavy. Never once has the salesman ever taught me something I didn't know in this process. He had earlier boasted of having gone through a 3 hour course to be able to sell the EVs Ford offers, but I had the power of these forums, Blue Oval forums, and the manuals, and brochures I had downloaded weeks prior as well as the Ford PHEV website, so I knew this would be another brutal experience of watching the salesman point out the obvious and sometimes incorrect information. Sooooo, I decided to let my wife take the front seat. I sat in the back while the salesman struggled. Keep in mind I had also briefed my wife on some things as well, and being that she has to work tonight, she wasn't happy the finance manager took more of our time than needed and was starting to get sore of the wait in general, so she was kind of bored to begin with. I swear she nearly fell asleep. Were it not for the MyFordTouch Lady responding to my salesman's accented requests, I am sure she would have. He struggled with the SD card for the navigation. When he finally got it in, the navigation was updating. Apparently this slowed the computer down enough to really make the MFT slow to respond, so it was even more brutal watching him go through the motions. I nearly broke out in the back seat with comical laughter as the MFT/SYNC system just sat there after he yelled his voice command trying to show off the system. It probably didn't help my situation that I've had voice-control in all of my past 4 vehicles, and used it in precisely none of them. I don't intend to use it in this one either. It just isn't fast or accurate enough yet. Strange since its been around for the better part of the last decade at least. Anyways, he finished up with asking us to call him with any questions we had on the system or the car, thanked us for waiting for the car, and for him and his co-workers today. I mostly joke about this delivery experience as being comical, but he really did make an effort and I can't say it was a terrible experience, so I can't complain too much. He did his job at least as expected.

 

Anyways, thanks for listening! Sorry for taking so much of YOUR time!! Pleas let me know if you have any questions or want me to explain anything, Happy to help those still stuck waiting! Live vicariously through me! Now here are some rewards (I hope they post correctly):

 

 

 

[Guest RRF985]

Congrats on the car! Sounds like you are very excited to have it.

[Barsoom]

And an annoyance: For I can't tell you how long, I've had vehicles with what boils down to 2 sun visors. The 'primary' (the one that usually has the lighted mirror) can be swung out to cover the side window. For those times when you're dealing with sun coming in through the side, or the windshield, or both depending on your direction of travel - you can swing it out and then swing the 'secondary' one down. For many years in many vehicles, the primary also has a pull-out extension to cover more of the side window.

I lost both the secondary visor, and the pull-out extension, in my 2011 Edge and was unhappy enough to let Ford know. And now the '13 Fusion carries on the tradition. Ugh.

 

I'm a little late to this thread, but the window visors slide along the connecting rod instead of extending or folding down. So, you can adjust the position of the visor along the side window, but you cannot change the size of the visor.

[Tommyjr_]

That's a sharp looking car Tommy

 

Hey thanks.

[Tommyjr_]

How's it driving for you scooter?

[Scooter80]

I'm a little late to this thread, but the window visors slide along the connecting rod instead of extending or folding down. So, you can adjust the position of the visor along the side window, but you cannot change the size of the visor.

 

Right! Just took advantage of this today. Bright and sunny but still a dreary 31 degrees. :-(

 

 

 

How's it driving for you scooter?

 

Driving great! Wife had no problems to and from work this morning, but was afraid to pull it into the garage when she got home so I put another 40 miles on today hybrid-only. Still did well enough. You can definitely hear and feel the ICE when taking off from a stop, but its not all that bad. Otherwise the ICE kicks in very smoothly and near silently at speed. The Empower gauge setting is very useful for attempting max MPG. So far the computer shows 39.7 lifetime mpg in the 189 miles that are on it. This is only with one full and one 3/4 charge. Not bad I think. Got a lot of looks today too, probably partly because of the silence in parking lots! Lol, kinda creeps up on people.

 

Still working on the iOS PHEV app becoming fully functional as I think I'm still in the 24 hr waiting period before the final permission is asked for. Otherwise I have gotten connected to it after some difficulty and it has some cool functions so far.

 

Will def have to get a level 2 charger soon.

 

[Tommyjr_]

Alrighty then. Glad it's working for you. And yea they are super quiet! Lol

[boogs]

Fresh wash today

 

 

[MineralstangGT]

Fresh wash today

 

 

Aw yeah! Looks gorgeous!

[d-rail]

Fresh wash today

 

 

nice looking ride

[DelS]

Anyways, thanks for listening! Sorry for taking so much of YOUR time!!

You're car looks great, Scooter. And your insight is very helpful. Please post more thoughts when you can. fwiw, you may need to get a rental fee from your dealer for the rear end ad space you've got there, though.

[DelS]

nice looking ride

Sweet look, boogs. You've got me thinking about that grey, now.

Edited March 24, 2013 by DelS

[TurboTi]

boogs: I don't know if you are using any special photographic technics, but your car looks really nice there.

[B8BB8B]

Morning pic!