The Titanium on the other hand walks a fine line between trying to appeal to those who want to go exploring and also take bites out of, say, non ute-based 4X4 wagons like Toyota Prado. With the update last year, while other Everest variants saw a price rise, the Titanium actually copped a price drop of $711, now listing at $73,990+ORCs.
For the coin it gets not-very-off-road-friendly 20-inch alloy wheels, a tow bar (but without brake controller), semi-auto parallel park assist, dual glass panel powered sunroof with power blind, eight-way power front passenger’s seat with manual lumbar adjustment, heated front seats, power fold third-row seats (individually – 50:50), ambient lighting and illuminated stainless steel front scuff plates.
While Ford offers a no-cost 18-inch alloy option for the Titanium our long-termer has arrived, as mentioned, on 20s. This isn’t ideal but given we’re not going to be building this thing up for Outback travel, we should be able to get away with it for most of the things we’ve got planned.
We’ll review the Everest Titanium in more detail next month so, we’ll keep this brief. The interior of the Everest is nice and roomy with the Titanium’s driver seat offering plenty of powered adjustment, while the Trend offers this too only the Titanium offers height adjustment for the passenger seat. Climb into the back and there’s plenty of room for adults to sit across the back, although the pinched in nature of the roof line means that two adults will be more comfortable than three. The third-row seats are raised and lowered (individually) via switches in the boot space.
The boot is a decent size, even if you’ve got all three rows in use, with 450-litres expanding to 1050 litres with the third-row down and a cavernous 2010 litres with the third- and second-row folded down flat (bear in mind, these measurements are ‘loaded to the roof’).
The Everest has always done a really good job of hiding its ute-based origins, in fact, I think you can confidently claim that as far as on- and off-road ride and handling go, it’s the pick of the ute-based 4X4 wagons. And it’s much better than a Prado too. Leave the bitumen and the Prado edges the Everest but it’s not by much and, again, the Everest is probably at the head of the pack as far as the rest of the ute-based wagons are concerned when you head off-road. Sure, there’ll be those who’ll argue something like an MU-X with its proven diesel engine is more of a known quantity, but then it lacks the refinement of the Everest around town which is where you’ll spend 90 percent of your time.