Ford launches new EcoSport starting from Rs 6.79 lakh onwards

Ford India, launched the new version of its popular compact sports utility vehicle EcoSport, priced between Rs. 6.79 lakh and Rs.10.44 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). 

Ford India has readied the new version of the EcoSport to wrest leadership from Hyundai's newly launched Creta and counter Mahindra's new TUV 300. Hyundai Motor India, which launched the Creta in July, has already got more than 54,000 bookings for the SUV and is making on an average 7,000 units a month.

Visual changes are negligible, apart from signature light guides in the headlamps, which will now also feature daytime running lights/fog lamps. The interiors benefit from chrome treatment on inner door handles, cluster ring and cluster appliqué, window regulator switches and air register tabs, while the steering wheel and handbrake lever are now trimmed in leather.

"Ahead of the festive season, we have made our clever, compact SUV even more stylish with a host of smart features and enhanced power to delight consumers," Ford India president and managing director Nigel Harris said in a statement. 

The new EcoSport comes in three engine options. The petrol variant powered by 1.5 litre engine is priced between Rs 6.79 lakh and Rs 9.93 lakh, while the other petrol option powered by Ford's 1 litre EcoBoost engine is available at a range of Rs 8.53 lakh and Rs 9.89 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

The diesel variant powered by 1.5 litre engine with improved power is tagged at Rs 7.98 lakh to Rs 10.44 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). 

In the new face-lifted avatar of EcoSport, Ecoboost petrol engine will also be available on the mid-variant Trend+. 

Here’s the complete variant-wise list of the additional features that will be offered with updated Ford EcoSport:

• Ambiente: 12V Power socket and rear folding seats
• Trend: ABS+EBD
• Trend+ (New Variant): IN addition to the features offered on the Trend trim, this will get dual front airbags, auto aicon, distance to empty, outside temp display, econometer, average speed, avg fuel efficiency, fog lamps, chrome grille, roof rails, signature light guide for the headlamps.
• Titanium: Smart Key, Keyless entry, Push button start
• Titanium+: Auto wipers, auto headlamps, daytime running lights, interior chrome pack, leather-wrapped handbrake.

Ford India said among other features, the new EcoSport is equipped with rain sensing wipers, automatic headlamps and electrochromic mirror that automatically deflects a beam of light from trailing vehicles to minimise obstruction to drivers.

The new version of the EcoSport, along with a new Figo hatchback and the Aspire compact sedan, will improve Ford's position in the Indian market. 

New Ford Figo Launched in India

Ford India is launched the much-awaited new Ford Figo 2015 in India.  The American carmaker Ford rolled out the car at a starting price of Rs. 4.29 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).

The new Figo is lot more spacious, feature rich and premium than the previous generation model.

Sharing most of its design elements, features, and engine options with the Aspire, the new-gen Figo definitely looks more upmarket than before. With the first-in-class 6 airbags, dual-clutch automatic transmission, and the most powerful engine lineup, the Figo is also the most feature-loaded car in its league. Like the Ford Figo Aspire compact sedan, the new Figo will be manufactured at the company's Sanand, Gujarat facility. 

The new Ford Figo directly rival against the likes of the Hyundai Grand i10, Maruti Suzuki Swift, Honda Brio and Chevrolet Beat. 

The new Figo is available in three engine options- 1.2-litre Ti-VCT petrol, 1.5-litre Ti-VCT petrol and a 1.5-litre TDCi diesel. While the entry-level petrol engine is good for 88 PS of power and 112Nm of torque, the 1.5L Ti-VCT motor is capable of producing 112 PS of power. The oil burner is good for 100 PS of power at 4,000rpm and 215Nm of torque. Transmission options include a five-speed manual gearbox and a six-speed DSG automatic gearbox (Petrol). 

The new Ford Figo gets segment first six airbags (driver and co-passenger airbags, side and curtain airbags), Perimeter Alarm, Hill Launch Assist, ESP (Electronic Stability Program), ABS (Anti-Lock Braking System) with EBD (Electronic BrakeForce Distribution), reverse parking sensors and engine immobilizer. 

The new Figo is available in three trim levels- Ambiente, Trend and Titanium. Dual airbags come as standard on all variants. The base model is equipped with rear fog lamps, fabric upholstery, guid-me-home-lamps, tilt adjustable steering wheel, front power windows with one-touch up-down driver window, electric boot release and remote locking. The mid-level Trend variant gets all the features that are accessible in base trim. Adding to it, this variant gets front fog lamps, rear centre armrest, boot lamp, steering-mounted controls, electrically adjustable wing mirrors, all power windows, AM/FM Radio with AUX input, USB and Bluetooth. 

The range-topping variant gets rear defogger, driver seat height adjustment, climate control, ABS with EBD, ESP, alloy wheels, 4.2 MFD screen for the infotainment system, Ford MyKey and Emergency Assistance, SYNC with voice control and AppLink system, leather upholstered seats and 6 airbags (dual front, side and curtain).

The new Ford Figo hatchback comes in six exterior paint jobs- Orange/Gold, White, Grey, Black, Blue and Red.

New Ford Figo 2015 Segment First features include- six airbags (driver and co-driver airbags, side and curtain airbags), Hill Launch Assist, ESP (Electronic Stability Program), SYNC with Voice Control and AppLink system, leather upholstery for seats, 4.2 MFD screen for the infotainment system, Ford MyKey and Emergency Assistance.

The new Figo shares the engine lineup with the Figo Aspire compact sedan. While the diesel version of the hatchback is expected to return about 25.83kmpl, the petrol engine could deliver about 18kmpl. The powerful 1.5L Ti-VCT motor offers about 17kmpl of fuel efficiency.

Ford launches its first compact sedan Figo Aspire at Rs 4.9 lakhs

Ford India launched its first compact sedan Figo Aspire in India today at a starting price of Rs. 4.89 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).

With several segment-first features such as 6 airbags, 6-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox, leather seats, etc, the Ford Figo Aspire takes on the likes of Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire, Hyundai Xcent, Honda Amaze, Tata Zest and others in the sub-4 metre sedan segment. The Ford Figo Aspire has become the first car in its league to offer driver and front-passenger airbags standard across all variants.

It will replace the company's ageing Fiesta Classic sedan in the Indian market, which had seen sluggish sales due to a proliferation of compact sedans like Maruti Swift Dzire, Honda Amaze and Hyundai Xcent in the last three years. Sub-four-metre sedans due to their shorter length get excise duty benefits and are priced significantly less than full sized bigger sedans.

The new sub-compact sedan is offered with three engine options - a 1.5-litre Ti-VCT petrol (110bhp), a 1.2-litre Ti-VCT petrol (87bhp) and a 1.5-litre TDCi diesel (99bhp). While the 1.2-litre petrol and 1.5-litre diesel-engined variants will get a 5-speed manual gearbox, the 1.5-litre petrol model will come equipped with a 6-speed dual clutch automatic gearbox.

"There are many high end features that we are offering with the Figo aspire like six airbags and leather seats that are not on offer in this category," said Nigel Harris, president and managing director, Ford India. "It will also be exported out of here world over and Sanand will be a world class export hub. This is not a compromised car."

Figo Aspire is powered by a 1.2 litre petrol engine that belts out 88 PS power and 112 NM of torque and has a rated fuel economy of 18.2 kpl. The 1.5 litre diesel engine gives 100 PS power and 215 NM of torque with a fuel economy of 25.83 kpl. For a first, Ford is offering dual airbags as a standard feature in the Figo Aspire. The top end variant of the car is also equipped with six airbags - a first in this segment. 

The company will follow up the sedan with a hatchback version in the next few months that will replace the existing Figo small car. Compact cars is the largest segment in the Indian market accounting for 45% of overall sales or almost 1.1 million cars per annum. The segment is expected to grow to around 1.8 million cars per annum by 2018. Globally small cars are expected to account for 60% of overall sales in the near future.

In India, around 350,000 units of compact sedans are sold every year with Maruti Dzire the dominant leader with around 200,000 unit sales annually.

Ford EcoSport SUV launched at a starting price of Rs 5.59 lakh

US auto major Ford launched one of the most awaited cars of the year, the Ford EcoSport, at a starting price of Rs. 5.59 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

The Ford EcoSport will be available with three engine options -- the 1-litre EcoBoost petrol, 1.5-litre Ti-VCT petrol, and the 1.5-litre TDCi diesel. The 1.5 Ti-VCT will have the option of a six-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox (same as the one in the Fiesta) while the rest of the variants will sport a five-speed manual.

The EcoSport will be available in seven colours and 38 accessories.

The compact SUV will take on Mahindra & Mahindra's Quanto, Maruti Suzuki's Ertiga, Renault Duster and it will also try to wean away premium hatchback Hyundai i20 and prospective compact sedan customers of Maruti Suzuki Dzire and Honda Amaze.

Riding on economic prosperity, car sales zoom

One of the most revealing indicators for economic prosperity of a country is the growth of the automobile sector, specially the sales of cars. Booming car sales thus conclusively indicate that the Indian economy is doing well.

Fourteen players in the car industry together sold 19.83 lakh cars in the financial year 2010-11, a whopping 30 per cent more than 15.28 lakh cars sold in the previous financial year. Surely the Rs 100,000 crore Indian car has found a place in the world map by becoming the fastest growing in the whole world.

“The impressive growth witnessed by the auto sector appears primarily to be driven by the strong revival of demand spurred by ongoing growth momentum of the economy,” said Society of Indian Automobile Manufactures (SIAM) Senior Director Sugato Sen. “The growth rate would have been still better had there been no global slowdown.”

Agreed Toyota Kirloskar Motors Deputy MD Shekhar Viswanathan “Rapidly rising disposable income of Indian middle class is fuelling the growth of the car industry.”
Though the industry did extremely well, same was not true for every one. While aggressive new players ate away market share from the incumbent players, some old ones actually slowed down.

The market leader, Maruti Suzuki India with 49 per cent market share pushed up its car sales by 26 per cent to 9,66,447 in 2010-11, the second largest Hyundai Motor India grew 14 per cent. Tata Motors which sharply revived sales of country’s smallest car Nano, sold 2,56,202 cars, 27 per cent more than the previous year. Ford India and General Motors too did well. (See table)

But there were a few laggards. Honda Siel Cars sold 58,951 cars, 3.87 per cent lower than previous year, Fiat India’s sales was down 15 per cent and Hindustan Motors dropped 20 per cent.



Action speaks

Mixed fortunes among the car manufacturers in 2010-11 also demonstrated the fact that those who were more active in terms of new launches and refreshments did better than those who were not. Maruti Suzuki, for example, re-launched all its old models with much superior K-series engine. Maruti now has this new petrol engine in Alto, Ritz, A-Star, Zen Estilo, Wagon R and in Swift. The new K-series engine not only provides much better mileage than the earlier engine but also generates more power to the car.

“The primary factors that helped us to boost our sales is introduction of new fuel efficient K-Series engines in virtually all the models. Result of intensive in-house research and development efforts, this engine boosted the image of our cars,” Maruti Suzuki India Chief General Manager (Marketing) Shashank Srivastava said. “It helped us keeping ahead of our competitors and has considerably improved our portfolio in the auto market.” Maruti also introduced a diesel version of its sedan SX4 and also launched a luxury sedan Kizashi. Hyundai too introduced a more fuel efficient Kapa engine for its small cars.

New launches and refreshment also helped others. Hyundai launched new i10 and new Verna, Ford India’s Figo, Nissan Motor India’s Micra, Vokswagen’s Polo, Toyota’s Etios and Skoda Auto India’s Fabia are a few good examples of how excitement created with new models helped them sell more.

During the fiscal, Tata Motors launched the all-new Tata Indica eV2, Tata Indica Vista Drivetech4, Tata Indigo e-CS, new Tata Manza, Tata Venture and the Tata Aria. Said Viswanathan of Toyota, “There is a huge excitement for our new car Etios and we have 5 months waiting period for it.

Now that we have started the second shift in the new plant our monthly production has gone up to 6,900. Hopefully we will be able to clear the backlog soon.” According to SIAM President Pawan Goenka the passenger vehicle segment saw 24 new launches and 40 refreshed versions in 2010-11.

Small is big

The other interesting feature of the Indian car market is that although there were several hyped up launches of big and expensive sedans, the small car segment continued to rule Indian roads in 2010-11. Small and compact cars accounted for 78 per cent of industry’s total sales. In the A1 segment, Tatas revamped their entire strategy on Nano which led to its sales zooming to 70,432 in 2010-11, more than double of 30,350 it sold in the previous year.

To arrest the sagging sales of Nano, Tata Motors changed the earlier plant to sell Nano only through pre-booking to open sales about six months ago. As open sales began the company created the necessary sales, marketing and finance infrastructure. In addition to 617 odd regular sales outlets the company set up Special Nano Access Points (as of now about 210 across the country) where customers can experience, test-drive of the car.

To build consumers’ confidence the company unleashed huge advertising campaigns through print and television media and also offered a 4-year or 60,000-km (whichever is earlier) manufacturer’s warranty. The company also tied up with 28 banks and non-banking finance companies to offer loans up to 90 per cent of the value at easy rates.

“The impact of these initiatives can be seen in the progressively growing monthly sales of Nano-- from 5,784 in December 2010 to 8,707 in March,” said Tata Motors Vice President R Ramakrishnan. As the company’s plant at Sanand, Gujarat, reaching almost the full capacity, Tatas may soon have to build another plant for Nano, said Ramakrishnan.
Speedy sales growth of Ford Figo, Nissan Micra, Chevrolet Spark and Beat, Hyundai i10, Maruti Alto and Swift also point to the fact that small and compact cars are in great demand. No wonder Toyota is planning to launch a hatchback small car Liva and Honda a small car Brio around June this year. To complement its offerings GM will soon launch Beat with a one litre diesel engine. Said GM India Director Marketing P Balendran, “We have done very well in 2010-11 as our two small cars Spark and Beat together sold around 72,000 and Cruze has seen good pick up in demand.”

Exports stagnate

Another interesting trend is that India is slowly but steadily emerging as a export hub for cars. The country exported 447,403 cars in 2010-11, almost same as previous year. Hyundai Motors which exports i10 and i20 from its plant in Chennai exported 2.33 lakh cars, Maruti exported 1.36 lakh cars and the new player Nissan India exported 55,000 cars. With the demand pick up in the European market, exports of cars from India in the current year are expected to be much higher.

Growth to slow down

The boom story in 2010-11, however, may not be repeated in the current financial, fears car makers. Both Balendran and Viswanathan feel that car sales growth in the current year may slow down to around 15 to 17 per cent as against 30 per cent growth last year.

Reasons are several: hike in interest rates, increase in commodity prices (steel, copper, plastics), overall inflation in the economy lowering the disposable income, rising wage cost and above all very high prices of petrol and diesel. “Current year scenario is not as rosy as it was last year. Costs have gone up for almost everything, but there is a limit to which we can pass on the cost.”

Balendran of GM thinks that apart from all round increase in cost, steep and frequent rise in interest rates will severely affect customers’ ability to take loans. “This is big problem as 85 per cent of cars in India are bought with loans” he said.

Figo Drives New Sales Records For Ford

The all-new Ford Figo has received more than 10,000 orders less than one month after it went on sale, a new Ford India record. In response to the strong demand, Ford India will launch a second production shift at its plant in Chennai.

The Figo’s popularity helped Ford India’s overall March sales more than triple from the same month a year ago, rising an impressive 203 percent to 9,478 units. The exceptional March performance, which also included strong sales of Ford Ikon, Ford Fiesta, and Ford Endeavour, were nearly triple Ford India’s February sales, increasing 194 percent.

“We are delighted at the initial response to Figo, and are incredibly proud to have struck such a positive chord with Indian consumers,” said Michael Boneham, president and managing director of Ford India. “The launch of Figo is the start of a transformed Ford in India, and a true reflection of our commitment to delivering world-class products that allow Indian customers to feel the difference.”

Part of Ford’s US$500-million investment in India, Figo was designed and engineered with Indian customers in mind – including months of exhaustive customer clinic research and thorough testing in both simulated and actual road evaluations.

Aimed squarely at more than 70 percent of the country’s new vehicle market, Figo has significantly bolstered Ford’s competitive position. This has been one of the best launch response and volumes achieved in the first month of sale by manufacturers in India’s automotive history.

The Figo is one of the more than 20 new vehicles Ford is introducing globally in 2010. The new cars, trucks and SUVs, which offer class-leading fuel economy, quality, safety and technology, represent substantially more new or freshened product by volume than was introduced in 2009.

During the course of this journey, more than 900,000 people visited the Ford Figo homepage www.fordfigo.in to know more about the car and spent and average of over 8 minutes on the website. In addition, thousands of people joined Ford Figo communities across social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter.

“As we remain committed to redefining the Ford brand in India, we expect this momentum to continue,” said Boneham. “Factors such as the initial price of the car, fuel efficiency and cost of maintenance are critical in determining affordability for a new car buyer. Indian customers are confirming that Figo solidly delivers on all of these.”

With longer intervals of key maintenance components due to better durability, competitive cost of the parts and the short time required for vehicle servicing, Figo is placed among the leaders in scheduled service over a 5 year/100,000 kilometre period.

As part of ongoing efforts to demonstrate its competitive cost of ownership, Ford India recently announced the opening of 28 dealerships in India, bringing the total number of Ford outlets to 164 facilities in 97 cities. The company plans to expand to 200 facilities by the end of the year.