James Foley of Leighlinbridge, Carlow, is the proud owner of a 2007 7-seater Ford Tourneo Connect taxi which has done an incredible one million kilometres and is still going strong. James has been astounded by the reliability of his Tourneo Connect which he bought second hand in 2008. James works as a taxi-driver in the Carlow-Kilkenny area with the occasional longer run up to Dublin. The Tourneo Connect has a standard 1.8 litre TDCi diesel engine which James says has not given an ounce of trouble. “In my business, regular servicing of your vehicle is an absolute must and I religiously stick to the service schedule – never more than 12,000km between service actions. I also always insist on using only top quality oil in the engine,” said James. “And you can see the result of this dedication to regular maintenance in the high mileage I have put on the car and the ongoing trouble-free motoring that I get from it. No reason why she won’t be good for another million!”
James faced a unique problem when the car’s odometer reached 999,999km – the older format dials did not reset themselves to zero automatically. Main Ford Dealer, Boland’s of Wexford, stepped in and helped reset the dials free of charge for James. Ciarán McMahon, Chairman and Managing Director of Ford Ireland, said: “We are delighted to hear about James’ very impressive milestone of reaching 1,000,000km in his Tourneo Connect. It just shows what can be achieved when you look after a vehicle’s engine properly. It also helps when you have a really well put together powertrain like the Ford TDCi diesel engine!”
The Tourneo Connect is the passenger version of the Transit Connect van – the smaller brother of the truly iconic Ford Transit van. A new version of the Transit Connect will be arriving in Ireland in May this year. “New car models with their newer digital mileage display will not have the problem of displaying 1,000,000km that James encountered with his 2007 vehicle, so I am sure we will continue to see well-serviced models displaying such impressive mileage milestones”, concluded McMahon.
