Blog: What It’s like Driving a Crossover-Hatchback off the Road

I went to drive the Ford Freestyle on a custom-built off-road track, but it left me wanting a little more.

If you're a car enthusiast, you wouldn't miss a chance to go off-roading - regardless of the car you're driving. Same was my thought when I went for a mild off-roading event Ford had organised to test out its Freestyle cross-hatch's off-roading capabilities in Gurgaon. Testing a hatchback off-tarmac makes for a good story, I thought.

Although I was excited, the weather was making me think twice before leaving. However, as I went about my rather tame adventure, the rain luckily stopped and it was bright and sunny till the time I reached the venue.

Upon reaching the venue, the challenging tracks and obstacles at Off Road Adventure Zone in Gurgaon got me excited as I thought I would be tackling the menacing looking ones in a hatchback (hopefully keeping the car in one piece). 

That was not the case - the organisers had made another course, which was not as extreme and was short enough to cover in a few minutes. With just one pit full of water and a few small mounds of mud, the course was in fact, rather tame. And the drive a bit too short to even get a feel of the car as we got just a single round through the course.

When it was my turn to go around the course, a 1.5-litre diesel engine variant of the Figo-based Freestyle was waiting for me to test. Impressed with the interiors and the ground clearance on the little car, I lined up at the starting line.

With only a handful of small obstacles, my so called off-road experience ended before I could even get comfortable with the car or the obstacles. Even the slush pit felt quite easy to handle. 

With the idea of testing the car’s off-road capabilities, this course was not enough for any kind of test. However, the active roll protection and hill assist worked perfectly on the obstacles designed to demonstrate these features.

Being an enthusiast and taking my car to places it shouldn't go to, this felt like another one of my expeditions with my car - just shorter and in a different car.