Our Ford Everest Titanium long-termer arrived only a few days after I did at Unsealed 4X4, but after a couple of weeks’ worth of work commuting, I’ve already put 1000km on the clock. But, beyond a couple of runs across some tracks close to the office, I haven’t had a chance to do anything fun with it. Sigh.

The Everest copped a very mild update towards the end of last year (2018) getting a new-look bumper and grille but, I’ve got to say, unless you parked them side by side, you’d be hard pressed to spot the differences. The inside copped some similarly minor updates, but it was the addition of the Ranger Raptor’s bi-turbo diesel engine and 10-speed automatic transmission that grabbed headlines. And, while I don’t want to open up that can of worms right now, I can say that, for me, the bi-turbo is more suited to the Everest than the Raptor.

While models like the mid-spec Trend offer access to both the 3.2-litre five-cylinder turbo-diesel and the new 2.0-litre bi-turbo, the Titanium is available exclusively with the bi-turbo motor. Ideally, we would have been long-term testing the Trend because, if you’re looking to buy a touring 4X4 then the Trend is probably the model you’d look hardest at.

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The Titanium on the other hand walks a fine line between trying to appeal to those who want to go exploring and also take bites out of, say, non ute-based 4X4 wagons like Toyota Prado. With the update last year, while other Everest variants saw a price rise, the Titanium actually copped a price drop of $711, now listing at $73,990+ORCs.

For the coin it gets not-very-off-road-friendly 20-inch alloy wheels, a tow bar (but without brake controller), semi-auto parallel park assist, dual glass panel powered sunroof with power blind, eight-way power front passenger’s seat with manual lumbar adjustment, heated front seats, power fold third-row seats (individually – 50:50), ambient lighting and illuminated stainless steel front scuff plates.

While Ford offers a no-cost 18-inch alloy option for the Titanium our long-termer has arrived, as mentioned, on 20s. This isn’t ideal but given we’re not going to be building this thing up for Outback travel, we should be able to get away with it for most of the things we’ve got planned.

We'll review the Everest Titanium in more detail next month so, we’ll keep this brief. The interior of the Everest is nice and roomy with the Titanium’s driver seat offering plenty of powered adjustment, while the Trend offers this too only the Titanium offers height adjustment for the passenger seat. Climb into the back and there’s plenty of room for adults to sit across the back, although the pinched in nature of the roof line means that two adults will be more comfortable than three. The third-row seats are raised and lowered (individually) via switches in the boot space.

The boot is a decent size, even if you’ve got all three rows in use, with 450-litres expanding to 1050 litres with the third-row down and a cavernous 2010 litres with the third- and second-row folded down flat (bear in mind, these measurements are ‘loaded to the roof’).

The Everest has always done a really good job of hiding its ute-based origins, in fact, I think you can confidently claim that as far as on- and off-road ride and handling go, it’s the pick of the ute-based 4X4 wagons. And it’s much better than a Prado too. Leave the bitumen and the Prado edges the Everest but it’s not by much and, again, the Everest is probably at the head of the pack as far as the rest of the ute-based wagons are concerned when you head off-road. Sure, there’ll be those who’ll argue something like an MU-X with its proven diesel engine is more of a known quantity, but then it lacks the refinement of the Everest around town which is where you’ll spend 90 percent of your time.

ABOVE Designed and developed here in Australia, the Everest is a good-looking machine and the rounded design at the front and back helps when tackling rough terrain

ABOVE There’s not a lot of room in the engine bay but the air intake is up nice and high giving the Everest an 800mm wading depth

BELOW The Everest’s dashboard is well designed and practical with all of the key controls falling easily to hand

BELOW One of our first changes will be to swap the highway tyres for something more aggressive

"The Everest has always done a really good job of hiding its ute-based origins"

The Everest also offers a clever traction control set-up, as well as an adjustable Terrain Management System which we’ll go into further detail on in another article, and a rear differential lock to ensure there’s not a lot it won’t go up and over. Where the Everest steps ahead of its key competitors is when the rear differential lock is engaged and you run out of wheel travel, the traction control system remains active on the front axle meaning you’ll be able to maintain forward momentum. We’ll show you this in action in a video review in the coming weeks.

But, in short, our quick run out along a few tracks this week told us a few interesting things about the Everest that we'll explore in more detail in later articles. But, briefly, the Everest runs out of wheel travel compared with, say, the Toyota Prado, but its traction control system is excellent and so is mechanical grip in low-range. The track we drove was only short but there's a mixture of terrain, from hard dirt, to soft bush sand, to rocks and ruts and even some mud. The Everest handled it all pretty easily, to be honest, but the highway tyres meant the traction control system was working harder than it would have needed to if we'd had something more aggressive wrapped around the 20s.

The off-road angles are 29.5-degrees approach, 25-degrees departure and 21.5-degrees rampover and the Everest offers an impressive 800mm wading depth, and the front and rear overhangs are 916mm and 1137mm, respectively. Having climbed underneath the thing I can tell you the lowest hanging bit is the diff pumpkin, as you'd imagine, and it measures 225mm from the ground. This is about the minimum ground clearance when it comes to a touring four-wheel drive.

Away from the dirt, the Everest is easily the best riding and handling ute-based 4X4 wagon in the segment. Indeed, it's easily more comfortable and fun to drive than the Toyota Prado with which it's often compared. It’s comfortable and, while it’s not a sports car it can be driven with real enthusiasm.

So, what will we be doing with our Everest while we’ve got it? Well, beyond writing regular updates here online and in the magazine, we’ll be fitting some accessories to it to make it a little more rough-road friendly, taking it on some trips, and just generally living with it to find out what the Everest is like to live with on a daily basis.

Besides the monthly updates in the magazine, we’ll be posting weekly updates on our Everest long-termer.

ABOVE The Everest is comfortable on-road and capable off it, but we can’t wait to fit some more aggressive rubber