Ford is working on a facelift for the Ford Aspire. Recently, the facelifted Ford Aspire was spied in China, a market where the current pre-facelift model is not sold.
Ford makes two versions of Ford Aspire, one with a 4,254 mm-long body and one with a 3,995 mm-long body. The latter was developed specifically for India, where petrol and diesel cars with length not exceeding 4,000 mm attract only 1% compensation cess as opposed to 17% or 20% if the length over 4,000 mm. China will most likely get the longer version.
The facelifted Ford Aspire features a Ford Mondeo Vignale-inspired hexagonal mesh grille at the front. Inside, it gets a redesigned centre console similar to that of the Ford Freestyle, with the 6.5-inch SYNC 3 touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. With the incorporation of this new system, there’s a noticeable reduction in the number of buttons, giving the interior a cleaner and more modern styling. Ford has changed the place of the USB port and equipped the model with two of them.
The current Ford Aspire is available in India with three four-cylinder engines: 1.2L Ti-VCT petrol, 1.5L Ti-VCT petrol and 1.5L TDCi diesel. While the diesel engine may continue as is, the 1.2L and 1.5L petrol engines may get replaced by the new 1.2L and 1.5L three-cylinder petrol engines from the Ford Freestyle and Ford EcoSport respectively.
Originating from the Dragon engine family, the new 1.2L petrol engine produces 96 PS and 120 Nm of torque in the Freestyle and the new 1.5L petrol engine develops 100 PS and 205 Nm of torque in the EcoSport. Ford may offer the former with the MX65 5-speed manual transmission made by Getrag and the latter with a 6-speed automatic transmission.
Also See: Facelifted Ford Endeavour (Ford Everest) spied testing completely undisguised
The 2018 Ford Aspire is expected to go on sale in India in the second half of the year. Ford is working on a pure electric variant of the Ford Aspire as well for our market, but that is based on full-size version. China will get the new Ford Aspire in summer next year, as a Changan Ford joint venture product.
[Image Source: BitAuto]
