Ford Everest

The seven-seat family wagon stakes heat up, as we pit the new 2.0-litre Everest against the popular MU-X.

The MU-X has always offered one of the bigger interiors in the class, but the Everest has caught up with it with the latest model. Both the Everest and MU-X have rated towing capacities of 3500kg, which is the maximum for this type of standard vehicle. This is evident both on- and off-road, on the highways and around town. Hate to sound like we’re beating up on the MU-X here, but it can’t take a win in terms of driveability. Points against the Ford for the tiny and fiddly thumb buttons on the right side of the gear shifter, which you’re expected to use for manually selecting ratios in the transmission. The Trend is the second of four models in the 2023 Everest line-up, but the highest spec with the four-pot engine. Both the front seats have power adjustment with eight-way adjustability for the driver and four-way for the passenger. Stepping into the Isuzu MU-X LS-T and the 3.0-litre diesel engine with a single turbocharger makes 450Nm and 140kW. This time we have the Everest Trend with the 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine and pitted it against the Isuzu MU-X in top-spec LS-T guise. The Trend is the highest spec Everest you can get with the four-cylinder engine and starts at $65,290 (+ORC) in 4x4 trim. In January ’23 the Everest jumped to the top of 4x4 wagon charts, shifting 1230 units to the Isuzu’s 828 and Prado’s 1182. [Isuzu’s MU-X](/isuzu/mu-x) was consistently the second-best seller behind Prado, and in 2022 it finished the year with 10,987 sales to Prado’s 21,102.