Indian car market is slowly shifting towards mini SUVs and no wonder;
every player wants to have a mini SUV in their portfolio. Renault and Mahindra
by launching Duster and Quanto has started the mini SUV revolution in India.
The next big launch in Indian automotive market will be the Ford Ecosport mini
SUV which will be launched early next year.
Ford has started testing the Ecosport in India and spy pictures of test
mules were taken near Chennai where Ford has a manufacturing plant. We came
across some clear spy pictures of Ecosport through our friend MotorBash, and
what is interesting is Ecosport will have an automatic variant as well. The
Ecosport automatic variant will be the first vehicle in its class to have an
automatic transmission which helps to easily manuover the vehicle in tight
traffic. The interiors look very similar to the All new Fiesta, so Ford will
share the parts and keep the Ecosport competitive.
The Ecosport will come in both Petrol and Diesel engines. Ford’s
revolutionary 1.0L Ecoboost petrol engine will maket its India debut with
Ecosport. Though being just 1.0L, the Ecoboost petrol engine produces 125 Bhp
of power and 200 Nm of torque, thats why Ford calls it ‘Revolutionary Engine
Technology’. The diesel engine will be carried from All new Fiesta which is a
1.5L common rail engine with 90 Ps of power.
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Regarding pricing of Ecoboost, Ford has already announced it will price
Ecoboost less than the Duster. Being less than 4 meters in length, the Ecoboost
enjoys 12% tax as compared to 24% for other vehicles. Sharing of parts will
futher help Ford to keep the price competitive and having seen the success of
Figo (which has been priced very competitively) Ford will price Ecosport at
around Rs. 7 lakh for base petrol variant and Rs. 7 to 8 lakh for base diesel
one.
We here at Automobile Planet are eagerly waiting to see the Ecosport on
the roads soon and we guess many would be having same thoughts as we do...
