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I’ve been on the hunt for great car deals lately, and when I saw and ad on the newspapers for the Ford Buy One, Drive One, Win One promo, I thought this would be a good opportunity to check out Ford’s offerings. The family had been eyeing a bigger car for a few years now (we’re ever growing!) and one of the nicer options we’ve been looking into is the Ford Everest.

And so the family headed over to Ford EDSA to test drive the Everest. Of course a test drive wouldn’t be complete without the whole family. We needed to see if we’d all fit! Sure, it’s just the wife, the two grade-schoolers, the baby and myself. But you never know how much space you need.

We test drove the 4×2 AT variant. I’ve never actually tried driving an automatic-transmission diesel-powered vehicle before, so this surely is a big change for me, coming from one used to a manual-transmission VVTi powered compact.

Perhaps we can leave the full review to the experts. My take: it’s a comfortable ride, especially given the supposed tuning/upgrade the Ford engineers did with this edition. The previous Everest models were said to have stiff suspensions, but this one is more car-like. Folks used to driving cars would definitely need time adjusting to the high driving position. It makes one feel more confident, especially when driving alongside those darned city buses and trucks. In a few words, it’s tough, it’s stylish, and it’s spacious.

The Everest costs about PhP 1.35 M for the entry-level manual variant and about PhP 1.44 M for the automatic variant. The quote given to me was for PhP 220,000 down payment, which is inclusive of LTO registration, one-year comprehensive insurance and chattel mortgage. This also includes a further PhP 60,000 discount, since 20% of the sticker price amounts to about PhP 280,000. Not bad!

Now I do hope I win that Ford Focus!