IAB speculates that the Euro Fiesta twins landing in India in due course of time could be christened Verve and Falcon.
The hatchback (spied in Chennai last year) is based on the Verve concept debuting the company’s trademark Kinetic design language. The Verve concept car’s inverted trapezoidal grille, rearward-stretching headlamps and the athletic hood was designed by Ford’s design team in Germany and England previewing the latest Fiesta hatchback. Like the Chevrolet Beat, the production model didn’t differ largely from the concept car.
There were three different Verve concepts showcased including sedan body style.
The Euro Fiesta sedan spied in Chennai recently, could be called Falcon in India. Ford might not use the Fiesta brand, reserving it for the currently running model.
The Fiesta sedan can be powered by a petrol 1.6 producing 118bhp and a 1.6-liter diesel engine generating 90bhp and 207Nm of torque. We are not sure about the hatchback’s powertrain options, the 1.4-liter diesel engine from the Figo is a good choice.
Ford as usual is tight lipped showing no interest in divulging information on future products.
Confusion and plenty of it surrounds the Ford’s new small car for the Indian market. As the name denotes, it is an all-new car developed from ground-up. We also construe that it is not a different looking or revised version of an earlier Ford model.
We discussed exhaustively how Ford’s new small car isn’t similar to or the Fiesta hatchback either, barring its Verve-based design connection. The new photoshop illustration from the Brazilian artist portrays how the face of Ford’s new small car would look like. The remaining car would be different, the one shown here appears like a shrunk Ford Fusion to me, the actual car would be have its corners rounded, shorter and simpler.
One of our readers sent this rendering to us today telling us this is possibly how Ford’s small car for India would look like. The Verve concept-based small car will have as high as 75% localization to keep costs in check and will host a sub 1.2-liter petrol and sub 1.5-liter diesel engine. Ford plans to make use of this car to make a sedan in the future, much like its peers Tata and Maruti Suzuki.
The hatchback, planned for a release later this year, will also be less than four meters in overall length to avail the small car cost advantages from the government. This car is thoroughly designed and developed for Indian conditions and might be exported to nations like Brazil in the future.
Michael Boneham, MD and president of Ford India-
It will the first offering from Ford in the mass-market segment and we are making efforts to keep it cost-competitive while making it a great value proposition
As per the company, despite the recovering economic conditions, its $500 million investment in the country stays unaltered. Ford has been developing this car for more than two years and plans to attack the entry level hatchback segment currently dominated by Hyundai, Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki.
