Ever heard of a Kuga Commercial?

[Smashey]

Hi All

Please feel free to call me Mike. Our fleet will soon be joined by a 2016 Kuga 2.0 TDCi 'Commercial' in Titanuim spec. I'm very excited about this as I've been driving a big LWB Pajero (shogun) for the last 400 Thousand and its aging faster than I am 🙂

I'm Irish based but British, so I know both markets well enough. If you don't know, over in Ireland we class some converted passenger cars as commercial vans. This helps reduce the crippling taxes for the business market - EG road tax is 'only' €333 per year. The conversion usually take the shape of removing the rear seating completely, blacking out the windows, spilling sour milk on the upholstery and dropping a few loose bolts into the subframe. This way it's just like a normal van! This is how my Pajero had been converted.

Onto the Kuga and remarkably the clever Ford distributors have managed to satisfy the 'commercial' criteria by taking a standard Kuga and removing the centre seat belt in the rear and putting a warning sign up telling people they risk death or serious injury if they try to use the middle seat. I'm guessing they class this 4 seater as a 'crew cab'. The only other difference between this and a well appointed Titanium Kuga is the engine is only putting out 120ps - I'm assuming this is unique to this commercial conversion as I don't see it anywhere else in the lineup & yes its a 2L not a 1.5 diesel. 

I'll have a load of Kuga related questions I'm sure when we take delivery, but just checking to see if anyone on the forums has any experience with this particular model?

Anyway - Hi from Ireland.