#SportMode

Once a fancy feature reserved for legitimately sporty or luxurious vehicles with ample power to generate grins regardless of electronic intervention, “sport mode” is now nearly ubiquitous. It appears in tepid (but efficient!) economy cars. Your mom’s crossover probably has a button, dial, or shift lever position that fiddles with shift points, firms up the steering, and makes the accelerator pedal touchier than a friend whose long-term relationship just went south.

Auto journos quickly make use of the feature when hooning an automaker’s latest and greatest, but does it ever serve a purpose to you, the owner?

Ford hasn’t told us when we’ll see the 2017 Fusion Sport on dealer lots, but it does want us to know how the 325-horsepower sedan alters its personality.

The top-shelf performance variant of Ford’s midsize family hauler lets its hair down with the press of a single button, which switches seven settings from “Jekyll” mode to “Hyde.”

In recent months I’ve driven a couple of cars that were considered sporting enough by their manufacturers that the letter S was part of the package. One was the Audi A7 TDI with a sport equipment group and a S Line badge on the fender. The other was a Chrysler 300S AWD and it, too, had a badge with the sibilant letter between R and T, in its case on the trunk lid.