Ford is ready to launch its incredibly successful EcoSport in European markets in June; first in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. The rest of Europe is slated to follow soon.
It’s basically the same car that’s sold India with a lot of changes. The mini SUV is going to be built in India itself and the additional 300 modifications will also be done here to make the cars safer and sturdier according to Zigwheels.com. This might seem very hypocritical on Ford’s part as these modified cars would not be sold in India, but if we ponder over the issue, we will realise that the joke is actually on us.
We love our cars, but we want them cheap. We are ready to sacrifice on safety features for this. India being an extremely price sensitive market, Ford had the option of taking a few liberties regarding the safety features to make the price competitive and appealing in the minds of prospective customers.
Europe, on the other hand, is a different ball game. It is a mature market and safety is a prime concern and there can be no compromise on that. To make the car meet the European crash norms, Ford had to make a lot of significant changes. The company hopes that the European launch will go without any glitches and obviously expects the EcoSport to be a runaway success like it is here.
But, what concerns us is the fact that Ford has been consistently citing limited production capabilities as the reason for insane waiting periods for their EcoSport here in India. Without taking any significant steps to reduce them, they have ambitions of utilizing some part from this limited production and distribute it further away from us!
Ford has also announced that there would be no all-wheel (4×4) drive options even in countries with lots of snow. This can be extrapolated to conclude that even India is not getting a 4×4, all- wheel drive version of EcoSport any time soon.
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