FORD TOURNEO COURIER

One look at the Tourneo Courier is enough to reveal its chief advantage over many commercial-based opponents. It has been designed like a proper passenger car, and very clearly isn’t another one-tonne van with an extra row of seats and some windows cut into the back of it.

Ford’s ambition for the Tourneo Courier, to transcend far beyond the usual market of taxi drivers, antiques dealers and house clearance regulars, becomes apparent as you cast your eye over its bold primary features: its large upright grille, that big glasshouse, those flared front wheel arches and that expressive rising waistline.

And the car gets more eye-catching still in upper-level model trim. Our test car was in lower-level Titanium trim, but go for an Active version and you get tough-looking skid plates and wheel-arch cladding, and you can pay more for a contrast-coloured roof in either white or black.

Underneath the bodywork, this is ostensibly a 4.3-metre, five-seat monocab-style utility car with square sides and a high roof. That makes it slightly smaller than a short-wheelbase Citroën Berlingo or Vauxhall Combo Life, and there’s no stretched seven-seat version offered, with Ford leaving that business to the Volkswagen Caddy-based Tourneo Connect.

Ford has redubbed this kind of vehicle a ‘multi-activity vehicle’, to distinguish it from conventional MPVs and better describe its primary purpose: to accommodate and carry not just families but all of the kit that might be associated with their hobbies and interests too. The high sides and tailgate make for a much bigger, taller cargo bay area than even a mid-sized SUV tends to offer, and because of the high roof and square corners, that boot can accommodate bulky things like bicycles more easily.

The Tourneo Courier is quite van-like notionally, then – but not mechanically. It uses Ford’s Global B supermini model platform, just as the Puma does, although it has a wheelbase that is more than 100mm longer than that of its sibling. Strut-type front suspension and a beam axle at the rear are supermini-class-typical, as are coil springs all round and gas-pressurised twin-tube shock absorbers.

For combustion engines, while Ford offers both petrol and diesel in the commercial version of this vehicle, the Tourneo is petrol only. It is powered by Ford’s long-serving three-cylinder 998cc Ecoboost turbo, which makes 123bhp at 6000rpm, and an overboosted peak torque of 148lb ft available for 30-second periods of full throttle.

An electric e-Tourneo Courier, with 134bhp and a 230-mile range, is due to become an alternative to the petrol version later in 2024.

The Tourneo Courier is one of those cars that feels like it could have been designed for Victorian-era top hat wearers. Up front, there really is a lot of fresh air above your scalp, which Ford makes use of via a handy roof storage console.

But even with that in place, the car’s driving position can feel oddly low with the seat adjusted all the way down, which isn’t a common characteristic of utility cars like this. It’s the first sign that Ford didn’t want this car to seem like every other ‘monocab Tardis’ to drive. Ironically enough, though, even taller testers said they preferred the driving position with the seat cushion ratcheted up at least halfway through its travel, to improve their relationship with the controls and all-round visibility.

The front doors feel particularly large, closing with a slightly reverberant whump. And the driving environment, once you are in, is simple and functional. It seems quite cheap in places but isn’t entirely bare or plain.

Ridged mouldings are used to create tactile interest, and fairly effectively, but if you lean a little on the interior door consoles with your knees, for example, they creak and flex. The primary footwell mouldings, meanwhile, have raised, proud edges on which you can snag your feet as you get in and out.

A digital instrument panel and free-standing infotainment screen sit atop the dashboard, concealing a wide storage cubby in which you can stash things you need regular access to. There’s a second, smaller one like it just ahead of the front passenger and a document holder built into the side of the passenger footwell.

The second-row seats mirror the abundance of head room up front and follow up with leg room roughly on a par with a mid-sized family car (typical rear leg room 740mm; Seat Ateca 710mm; Volkswagen Tiguan up to 770mm).

Those back seats are a little short, flat and hard in the cushions, they don’t slide fore and aft, and they’re not fully removable (as they are in a Dacia Jogger, Skoda Karoq, VW Caddy, or Ford’s larger Tourneo Courier models), which may disappoint some. But they do fold and tumble all the way forwards to maximise loading space to as much as 2162 litres, so, despite its compact size, the Courier certainly doesn’t fall short of outright carrying space.

Neat added-practicality features in the boot are limited to a storage cubby built into the side panel intended for muddy boots and a couple of smaller trays for loose items opposite. It’s scant evidence of imagination compared with the drop-down roof consoles, sliding hooks and organisers that rivals offer, admittedly at extra cost. Moreover, the mouldings chosen here look especially cheap and like they would mark easily.

Multimedia

Ford’s standard infotainment system for the Tourneo Courier doesn’t include a factory navigation system (the one on our Titanium-level test car was optional) but does include wireless smartphone mirroring and a wireless charging pad – which, given most owners would prefer to use their phone’s software anyway most of the time, is acceptable enough. The system comes with two wired USB ports in each row for charging other things, plus 12V outlets in both the front row and the boot.

The touchscreen is fairly easy to navigate, thanks to some well-chosen physical shortcut keys underneath it. That Ford’s nav bar disappears when you switch to Apple CarPlay is a little annoying, but the size of the screen probably made it necessary.

The heater control is mostly through the touchscreen, but we would have preferred permanent physical blower controls. Although it is a little more involved and distracting than it absolutely needs to be, this is still a fairly simple, navigable system that feels about right for the car.

Cars as fundamentally functional as this, which fire up and idle without the clatter and chug of a four-cylinder diesel engine, still seem novel, even when what’s going on with light commercial vehicle legislation has made so many on the market fully electrified these days. 

There is just a hint of initial coarseness about the Ecoboost triple’s character at low revs here, which suggests Ford hasn’t lavished any extra engine bay isolation measures on the Tourneo that are denied to the related Transit.

But once it’s spinning, this is the same agreeable, gently buzzy, hard-working little engine we have come to know so well. It revs cleanly, freely and with great linearity; it makes decent – though not exactly generous – accessible torque; and it allows the Courier to be just about fast and drivable enough to pass muster in the cut and thrust of daily passenger car motoring.

Against the clock, this is certainly a quicker car than Ford reckons it is. It achieved a 10.8sec 0-60mph time (while Ford claims 13.0sec to 62mph), and that might make it slightly quicker than a like-for-like Citroën Berlingo Puretech, and competitive even with a (considerably lighter and lower) Dacia Jogger TCe 110.

That’s only just about quick enough to avoid any lingering sense of plodding, commercial vehicle-typical progress being made, however. You do need to work this engine hard, and use the lower intermediate gears of the six-speed manual gearbox, to make it keep up with hatchbacks and the like.

It’s no chore at all to do, because the engine revs very willingly, and the gearbox is light, pleasant and surprisingly short-of-throw. The brake and clutch pedals are progressive and precisely tuned, making the Courier’s driving experience feel slightly more polished than cars like this tend to be.

But even when lightly loaded, this is a car that acquaints you pretty well with the carpet underneath the bottom of the accelerator pedal. It gets along just fine but, loaded with people and gear, it’s certainly at risk of feeling a bit underpowered.

Good lateral body control is an easy quality to overlook in a car like this. But when you consider it’s more likely than most to carry heavy loads and be fitted with roof boxes etc, it makes sense for the Tourneo Courier to be able to demonstrate secure grip levels, good general stability and at least a little bit of handling composure in reserve.

It does all of those things. Compared with the average van-related monocab, there is certainly a tauter edge to the ride that the Courier’s spring and damper rates create, which feels quite characteristically ‘Ford’ because it allows you to carry a bit more speed, through bend and over bump, than you might expect without running out of dynamic composure.

The steering feels similarly recognisable for its medium-heavy control weight and its medium-fast pacing, even if the Courier’s fairly long wheelbase and a grip level that’s only averagely high ultimately preclude any sense of agility in how the car takes a line through a corner.

Once it is turned in, the Courier certainly seems willing to be driven a bit more spiritedly than the average car in the class. It rolls a little but resists extremes of lean rather well, and maintains decent chassis balance and steering authority up to a dynamic limit that would be more than high enough to meet the average activity hobbyist’s needs – whether they were rushing to meet a downed hot air balloon, or to catch a morning tide – or those just running two minutes late for the afternoon school-run pick-up.

Right on the limit of grip, the car’s electronic stability controls do become a little rough and intrusive. Meanwhile, if you charge a little too hard over a mid-corner bump, you will find the Courier’s steering does begin to kick back a little and its axles start to clunk around. So, like all cars, this one has its dynamic comfort zone, but it’s a broader one than you are likely to expect.

Comfort & Isolation

The weather during our test was dry and calm, which no doubt helped the car’s case a little. But, according to our noise meter, it’s entirely comparable to most compact family cars for cabin isolation.

We recorded 64dBA of wind, road and engine noise at 50mph, and 68dBA at 70mph, so the faster it goes, perhaps the more its brick-like profile hurts. But plenty of passenger cars have been noisier of late, and the Dacia Jogger we tested in 2022 (in the damp, regrettably) was noisier at both speeds.

Fairly modestly sized 17in wheels – the kind a manufacturer can still get away with fitting to a utility car in 2024, but less easily to something that needs to be more inherently desirable – helped to keep cruising quiet, and even these were optional alternatives to the sensible standard 16in alloys with 65-profile sidewalls. The ride was mostly quiet and decently isolated, although it did become a little clunky over sharper edges taken at speed.

The car’s front seats have cushions fixed for inclination and length and, like those in the back, are a bit hard and flat, but we wouldn’t single them out for criticism for lacking comfort.

s explained earlier, the Tourneo Courier isn’t Ford’s new cheapest model, but it doesn’t miss by much.

It’s a telling sign of our times that there is no longer a new Ford on the price lists that costs less than £25,000. If the entry-level Courier Trend trim that the car maker offers in other markets had been taken by Ford of Britain, it might have just tipped below that level.

As it is, the UK offering opens with Titanium models that get alloy wheels, roof rails, heated seats, electronic climate control and a fairly full ADAS suite as standard. The step up to Active trim costs a further £1320 but adds several exterior styling changes, plus factory navigation and 17in wheels as standard – and that seems like quite a lot for the money.

In outright terms, Ford clearly hasn’t pitched this car as aggressively as it might have in value terms, but then petrol-powered rivals for it are becoming much thinner on the ground. A Dacia Jogger offers more seats but a fair bit less outright cargo space, while a Citroën Berlingo Puretech is cheaper but less well equipped.

Despite making alot of noise about returning to the value end of the compact car market, what Ford is actually doing with the Tourneo Courier is pitching for a small but significant premium.

Have this car in the specification you want, with a contrast roof and that mock-off-roader look, and it might cost you several thousand pounds more than some rivals. Does it deliver more across the board, beyond those tough, assertive looks, and against that kind of price? In some ways, yes, but not consistently.

Ford has done the job you would expect of it in making the Courier ride and handle with some distinguishing composure; it hasn’t been mean with equipment; and it has packaged the car well, showing how much carrying capacity can be squeezed into an easily parkable footprint.

But the Tourneo Courier comes up notably short of key rivals with its dearth of innovative practicality features, with a disappointing lack of cabin quality in places and with an engine that doesn’t leave much torque in reserve.

Appealing it may be, but for the money you might reasonably expect something a bit cleverer, more robust and more complete.