The Ford Ecosport is the oldest sub-compact SUV in the country and has been in the market since 2013. It was the Ecosport who originally started the sub-compact SUV trend before the likes of the Vitara Brezza and the Venue came in. The Ecosport received a mid-life refresh in 2017 but has remained mostly unchanged ever since its launch. While it is still due a generation change, two units of the Ecosport were recently spotted on roads around Ford’s Chennai-based manufacturing facility.
Interestingly, neither cars were wearing any camouflage but they were two different variants of the Ecosport - Trend and S. The Trend variant of the Ecosport came with black door handles and steel wheels. Meanwhile, the S variant came with body colored door handles and 16-inch dual-tone alloy wheels. It also featured roof rails. Now the Ecosport is long due a new turbo-petrol motor from Mahindra's mStallion turbo-petrol engine family. And the first thoughts are naturally hinting towards the same.
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Mahindra debuted their mStallion turbo-petrol engine family with the Mahindra XUV300 Sportz at the 2020 Auto Expo. The 1.2L three-cylinder turbo-petrol engine produces 130hp and 230Nm of peak torque. On the Ecosport, this engine will likely come mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox only, at least initially. A 6-speed AMT gearbox might be introduced at a later stage. However, considering the fact and Ford and Mahindra recently called off their JV, it remains to be seen how the story develops over time.
Currently, the Ford Ecosport gets the option of one petrol and diesel engine under its hood. The 1.5-litre Ti-VCT, 3-cylinder petrol engine in the Ecosport produces 122hp and 149Nm of peak torque. Meanwhile, the 1.5-litre TDCi diesel engine puts out 99hp and 215 Nm of peak torque. Both the engines come mated to a 5-speed manual transmission while the petrol engine is also offered with a 6-speed torque converter automatic gearbox.
Ford recently shuffled the variant lineup of the Ecosport and even slashed the prices of the sub-compact SUV by up to INR 35,000. Prices of the Ford Ecosport currently starts at INR 7.99 lakh and go up to INR 11.49 lakh. At the time of the update, Ford said that the Titanium+ variant will receive ‘an exciting update’ soon. We suspect this could be the imminent launch of the Mahindra's turbo-petrol engine on the Ecosport.
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[Image Source - IndianAuto.com]
