Ronald Wissmann
The 2021 Wards 10 Best Interiors are being revealed in random, non-alphabetical order one per day until Oct. In the Wards 10 Best Interiors competition, so often judges are evaluating vehicle interiors that are over-the-top in their appearance – “blingy” if you will – with copious amounts of shiny surfaces and bright and/or rich colors.
Don’t get us wrong, there’s a place for those kind of interiors in our competition, as you will see as additional winners are revealed.
Ford’s new battery-electric vehicle technically isn’t a luxury CUV. Our $56,200 Premium all-wheel-drive grade’s cabin (pictured below) is filled with soft, fine-grained faux leather, covering upper doors and the instrument panel. the ubiquitous heavy leather-grained hard plastic trim seen in most vehicle interiors, including premium models.
A cool, black-and-white check-patterned fabric (fabric being a European trend we’ve noticed appearing more and more in American vehicles) wraps parts of the IP and door trim. Rather, it floats a few inches above it, meaning one can slide a hand inside to grab something without performing the annoying and potentially distracting movement of unlocking the lid and flipping it up to access items inside the box. Technology-wise, smartphone pairing is incredibly fast and the onboard voice assistant understood virtually all of our audio and navigation commands, even when we went off script.
