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Ford turns to PHEV power for its mid-sized, VW-built monocab MPV

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As the fortunes of their opposite numbers from the Fast East have risen, European volume car makers have had it tough. While consolidation of ownership has given some a lifeline, others have simply found new ways to work together to adapt and survive.

The joint venture on commercial vehicles between Ford and Volkswagen, announced in 2019, is an example. Ford engineered the current VW Amarok and manufactures it alongside its own Ford Ranger pick-up in South Africa. In return (as well as giving Ford access to its MEB electric car platform for the Explorer and Capri), VW engineered and produces Ford’s mid-sized ‘multi-activity vehicle’, the Ford Tourneo Connect, alongside its own Volkswagen Caddy in Poznan, Poland.

But does the customer end up with the car they expect? That’s a question this road test will address, as the latest Tourneo Connect – powered by a Volkswagen PHEV powertrain – arrives in the UK.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Ford Tourneo Connect review 2025 002 side panning

Ford’s range of boxy MPV models now has three tiers. It opens with the Puma-based Ford Tourneo Courier. The C-segment-sized Tourneo Connect is next and, unlike the Courier, comes in both regular- and long-wheelbase forms, with up to seven seats. The Tourneo Custom is the biggest of the trio, ostensibly a nine-seat Ford Transit minibus.

The Courier and Custom can be had as all-electric options, but the Connect has been ICE-only since its 2022 introduction. Until now, that is, thanks to this new plug-in hybrid model, which uses a less powerful version of the 1.5-litre PHEV system also seen in the Golf, Passat, Tiguan and elsewhere. 

From the rear, it’s very hard to tell this car from a Caddy once you cover the badge. The long vertical tail-lights of both don’t help. A Ford-esque grille gives some differentiation up front.

A key bit of niche information here concerns the taxi market and specifically wheelchair taxi conversion. Because while many of the Connect’s rivals have now gone fully electric, they’ve neglected the wheelchair-accessible vehicle (WAV) market in doing so as the underfloor packaging of an EV rules out adaptation for wheelchairs. But the Connect PHEV can be adapted as a WAV in long-wheelbase form. Ford offers WAV conversion preparation as a factory option for the car; although the market’s specialist converters are still developing their particular offerings to complete the job.

The Connect’s 114bhp 1.5-litre turbo petrol and 120bhp 2.0-litre turbo diesel engines, both VW-sourced options, continue alongside the new PHEV, which itself combines a 114bhp electric motor with a detuned 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine from VW’s latest-generation four-cylinder eHybrid set-up to make total system outputs of 148bhp and 258lb ft of torque. 

There are no longer any four-wheel-drive models. All use six- or seven-speed dual-clutch front-drive transmissions. Suspension is via independent struts at the front and a torsion beam at the rear.

INTERIOR

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Of all the Ford cars made in partnership with VW (the Ranger pick-up, Explorer, Capri and this), the Tourneo Connect looks the least like a Ford – both inside and out.

But for the badge on the steering wheel, this might as well be a VW interior, from door handles to electric window switches to column stalks. There is plenty of substantial feel about the fixtures and fittings, however. It has a few too many shiny mouldings around the dashboard perhaps for any materially plush cabin appeal, though everything looks hardy and feels solid and well secured.

The dash-top cubby extends available storage beyond that afforded by the roomy door bins and smallish armrest cubby. There’s also a useful roof console. Even so, for a car like this, that's hardly going to town with your practical thinking.

VW’s 10in multimedia touchscreen runs Ford’s own infotainment software, which is easy enough to use. A row of permanent physical shortcut buttons below the screen is a great help in navigating it, making ADAS control toggles quickly accessible and doing the same for powertrain mode selection. Wireless smartphone mirroring is standard, with a device charging pad included on higher-grade Active models.

The car’s boxy profile and high roofline provide an abundance of front head room, even for taller drivers who prefer a higher-set seat, and it’s the same in the rear. 

Our test car was a short-wheelbase five-seater. (Seven seats are standard on all long-wheelbase models and an option on all short-wheelbase cars except for SWB PHEVs.) Its second-row chairs can be tumbled forwards and flipped up against the front seatbacks to extend cargo capacity or removed. 

Being fairly heavy, they’re too awkward to take out on a whim. But for those occasions when you do want maximum carrying space, their removal opens up more than 2500 litres of capacity even in the SWB car, up to a roofline that grants almost 1.2m of peak loading height. A standard folding front passenger seatback also gives you the option of carrying extra-long loads.

Sliding back seats and some cleverer expandable oddment storage features in the roof and boot sides wouldn’t have gone amiss here. But even without them, the Connect’s huge, tall, straight-sided cargo bay could make what is still a fairly small car remarkably useful.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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It takes only a few yards in the Connect PHEV to appreciate what relevant qualities it will bring to the line-up. The car moves off under electric power almost all of the time and there’s a more than adequate sufficiency of it for part-throttle town motoring. 

We tested the car against the clock running as a regular hybrid and in EV mode, and while it narrowly squeezed under the 10sec-to-60mph yardstick with both piston and electric motors working in tandem, it was barely two seconds slower without the help of the petrol element.

It isn’t the job of a vehicle like this to be fast, of course, but instead to hit an assured standard on outright performance with easy control and good drivability, so as to keep passengers and load alike well located and secure, and to have a little potency in reserve when heavy hauling is needed. 

The VW-sourced petrol-electric powertrain manages all that. It feels fairly responsive, and nippy without being over-sensitive, at town speeds; has enough urge to cope with flowing country roads and not get overworked when climbing; and only begins to feel slightly outmatched during the kind of fast motorway driving that most smaller utility vehicles would be likely to struggle with.

Unlike with some hybrid systems, you can select gears yourself using the shift paddles, so you can usefully prep it for overtaking or climbing, but it could sometimes be quicker with downshifts.

The car’s default energy regeneration mode, meanwhile, is an ‘automatic’ one that ramps up regen on a trailing throttle in heavy traffic, for example, but it also changes the progression of the brake pedal having done so, which most testers disliked. 

Turn the regen mode to ‘low’ and the car coasts more freely. The brake pedal travel becomes longer and feels quite soft initially, but you learn to modulate it and keep the car smooth in traffic well enough.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Ford Tourneo Connect review 2025 024 rear cornering

There isn’t much Ford-typical dynamic flavour about the Connect’s day-to-day driving – and, quite possibly, nor should there be. 

Boxy utility cars given to carrying heavy loads piled high need handling security and directional stability much more than they do cornering agility and driver involvement. So while greater directness and pace to the car’s on-centre steering response might have felt ‘more Ford’, it would also have been misplaced if it made this car fussier to steer. Firmer suspension rates might have fostered better back-road body control but wouldn’t have been worth their place either if they’d have made what is a broadly comfortable and settled ride needlessly reactive. 

This car gets away with its steady, conservative dynamic character, in short, because of what it is. It’ll tolerate being driven fairly quickly by rolling a fair bit but has moderate yet fairly well-balanced grip levels that survive into high speeds and isn’t so softly sprung that you’d expect a full cargo load to set it swaying and heaving down the road.

Assisted Driving - 3.5 stars

A full array of ADAS features was one of VW’s big reasons for moving the Caddy – and, by association, the Ford Tourneo Connect – onto its passenger-car MQB platform. So the Tourneo gets everything mandated by the latest EU legislation (driver monitoring, lane keeping assist, autonomous emergency braking and speeding reminder buzzer systems) as well as adaptive cruise control, blindspot monitoring, hill start assist and a reversing camera.

The systems are easy to toggle on and off, and if you deactivate the speeding reminder and lane keeping, you’ll find the others don’t intrude on the driving experience. Adaptive cruise tends to overreact for cars in adjacent motorway lanes but otherwise works well.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Being a size bigger than many of its supermini-based rivals (Citroën Berlingo, Vauxhall Combo Life, Peugeot Rifter), the Tourneo Connect was already saddled with a relatively high list price before the arrival of the PHEV version, which hikes matters further.

The car is better equipped than most rivals, however, being offered in only Titanium and Active grades. The PHEV powertrain kicks off just above £37k for a short-wheelbase model, however, and rises to the far side of £40k. For a car this utilitarian, it’s a lot of money, and plenty of all-electric options cost less.

The car’s electric-only usability is impressive. Thanks to its 19.7kWh battery, we recorded a real-world, mixed-use average electric range of 64 miles, which is close to as good as any sub-£40k PHEV. Also, 50kW DC rapid charging is supported, returning the drive battery from empty to full in less than 45min.

There is also the key consideration that, if you don’t want an all-electric monocab MPV such as those offered by the likes of Peugeot, Citroen, Toyota and Vauxhall, this Ford PHEV is one of very few options that don’t oblige you to run a car under a commercial vehicle registration. 

Petrol- and diesel versions of this car’s rivals now almost universally only come as light commercial vehicles (LCVs); a fact often hidden in the small print of their pricelists. This typically means they have to be fitted with bulkheads behind the rear seats (which, unlike in passenger-car versions, spoils their carrying versatility), and also applies restrictions on where they can be driven, and what speed limits apply to them.

This Ford, by contrast, is a monocob MPV you can run on petrol when you need to; that you can drive just like any passenger car; and that sacrifices nothing on outright carrying versatility. Those factors, plus the wheelchair conversion one, might well help to justify Ford’s pricing, at least for some.

VERDICT

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It may not be the most authentic Ford ever, but the Tourneo Connect PHEV nonetheless feels like the right car, with a suitable powertrain, for its very particular corner of the market.

However, with so many new brands redefining what value for money looks like in 2025, a mid-sized utility car with commercial roots that costs £37k seems expensive. 

The Tourneo Connect has versatility, drivability, comfort, refinement, huge outright space and surprising electric usability. But it’ll need every trump card and more to justify its price.

 

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce PhantomTesla RoadsterAriel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren SennaRenault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.