If you stop to think about the name of this car, even before you begin to talk about this car,
well the whole picture becomes immediately clear to you.
It's got one of the nicest sounding car names in the world - Fortuner.
A powerful name that instantly tells you that it has to belong to something special.
That it has to belong to something big and intimidating.
Sort of an SUV that you mom warned you about.
And then you ask, who makes it?
Well even better, Toyota.
Ladies and gentlemen, what a smashing SUV, what a smashing name.
Welcome to PowerDrift, the Toyota Fortuner.
This is the sort of car that has always stood for power and street presence.
And even if it wasn't your sort of driving, there was nothing better to push other luxury cars around the road
than this one.
The old Toyota Fortuner, didn't really have a lot of things, quite frankly, going for itself.
For example, the engine was unrefined and the interiors weren't pretty to look at.
But it worked.
Because of the power that the name commands, Toyota Fortuner.
Which meant that it would be extremely reliable, very dependable and that the service costs would be a joke.
Once upon a time the service costs for major service intervals was just 3000 Rupees.
For a car that cost 30 Lakh Rupees.
That's phenomenal.
And so while other 30 Lakh Rupee cars in India like your Skoda Superb, which was selling
250 a month, Fortuner sold 800 cars a month.
Which largely went unchanged for 10 long years, until this.
A full fledged, next generation Fortuner.
And so here's my plan.
Instead of telling you whether the new generation Fortuner is a good car or a bad car,
I'm just going to run through what all has changed in the new generation Fortuner.
So fasten your seatbelts, as I step on the gas.
The engine.
The new Fortuner gets a 2.8 Liter diesel engine, not a 3 Liter engine as was the case in the old Fortuner.
But this one produces more torque and more horsepower.
Now let's just start with the interiors, because that's what the Fortuner really needed fixed.
And there's a massive overhaul when it comes to the interiors.
It feels like the cabin has been clad with leather entirely on the inside.
It feels modern in many ways, it is user-friendly, it is ergonomic, there's lots of cubby holes,
you get ambient lighting.
And then this Touchscreen display out here, it doesn't look like it were after market.
The steering, well, it has vastly improved but it still feels vague and that's just about
the only thing that I'm not enjoying in my experience.
But it does a better job at stopping.
It has all four disc brakes.
The earlier Fortuner did not have disc brakes at the rear.
The old Fortuner got something called as full time All Wheel Drive.
This one gets an off-road biased 4x4 system.
The earlier Fortuner essentially was a rear wheel drive SUV.
It would transfer power to the front two wheels only when it detected slippage.
This is a proper 4x4, where power would be modulated to all 4 wheels, in off-road conditions.
This car is based on heavily modified Crysta's chassis and not the Hilux chassis, as was the case earlier.
So there's more space excavated.
The second row as well as the third row feel a bit more roomier now.
The rear suspension setup on the old Fortuner was not fully independent.
This car doesn't get it either.
But then the body roll on this one is vastly reduced.
The ground clearance has reduced by 5mm, the wheelbase is also shorter.
But then the body size ensures that it is longer and wider.
The diesel engine is an all new diesel engine.
2.8 Liter, 420 N/m torque, if you opt for the manual transmission and 450 N/m of torque,
beefed up torque for the automatic transmission.
And yes as you must have already guessed, this is the only full sized SUV that gives
you an option of having a petrol engine.
So if you're in the market for a big blown SUV, with only a petrol engine, this is your only option.
The Santa Fe and the Endeavour are all diesel.
At the front, it seems to have gotten Botox treatment.
High cheek bones with slim eyes and a nose that looks equally synthetic.
The changes seem to have been done to the new car to create an illusion of making it
stand taller than the old one.
Strong shoulder lines, step, wraparound LEDs and rear integrated spoiler all add to the look.
If you though the old Fortuner looked intimidating as a bouncer, this one doesn't.
With refinement, space and interior issues taken care of and a name like Fortuner,
what can possibly go wrong with this car?
Well, this can.
It is 3.5 Lakh Rupees more expensive than the Endeavour but doesn't bring up the same
feature list to the table.
It doesn't get the Terrain Response Management system or Cabin Active Noise Cancellation
or self park that the Endeavour so boasts of.
But I'm unable to make my mind up yet.
Because the Fortuner is a 2.8 Liter diesel engine in it's base variant as against 2.2 of the Endeavour.
And it gets 7 airbags standard in all variants as against the 2 airbags standard in the Endeavour base variant.
So literally, we're going to have to wait for some other day when we put it head on against the Endeavour.
For now, let's adopt a different approach in finding out
what competition this car has in it's current iteration.
You see premium brands like Mercedes and Audi celebrate when they sell 10,000 cars a year
and that's all their cars put together in India.
This, the Fortuner, alone sells 9600 cars a year.
And so in it's current iteration with space, refinement and interior issues taken care of,
can there really go anything wrong with this car?
Not really.
The world in recent times has seen a lot of radical changes that I have not known how to react to.
Trump is the President of the United States.
500s and 1000s are notes which will not be legally tendered in our nation anymore.
And I think a change as big as any other change is the fact that India's most beloved SUV,
the Fortuner has been completely revamped and it's one that I welcome with open arms.