Ford India is about to drop the Ford Freestyle in India, a car they describe as a ‘Compact Utility Vehicle.’ Is there a market for such a carIJ We drive it around Jaipur to find out
The world is moving to larger Sports Utility Vehicles, so rest assured the multiplying numbers of Hyundai Cretas you see on the road are not an Indian thing alone. And SUVs are not the giant hulks that they once were, smaller cars have had their suspensions raised. But the idea of the rough-road small hatchback has never really picked up. Not just in India but also in China and Europe, and of course, the United States, where people will look at you strange if you say you drive a hatchback, since most of them can fit on bed of a Ford F-150. In India we saw the Etios Cross from Toyota and the Polo Cross from Volkswagen, cars that both acquired a lot of plastic cladding and slightly raised suspensions with bigger tires. Neither of them set the sales charts alight.
So why does Ford think they will succeed with the FreestyleIJ I’ll get on to the drivability aspect of it but there are couple of reasons off the very top. The first is that there is no brand confusion. While there is no doubt that the Freestyle is a second-generation Figo, it has a new name. And the second reason, Ford believes and I have back them up here, is that the Freestyle gets a lot more than your standard Figo — a brand-new petrol engine, the excellent SYNC3 infotainment system complete with a 6.5 inch touchscreen, both of which I have to say are best-in-class. The car has also been raised (duh!) and now has a ground clearance of 190 mm, which when coupled with its shorter wheelbase, means that it does not need to worry about bad roads and particularly those small hillocks that are described as “speed breakers.”
But let me move on to what is the biggest change from the Figo and its Figo Aspire sedan to the new Freestyle, the all-new 1.2 litre TiVCT petrol engine. As Bharat Stage 6 fuels begin to be sold in the capital and manufacturers needing to adhere to the stricter emission norms for their vehicles as the norms become standard, diesel engines will get impacted. The need to meet the new emission norms will increase the price of diesel-powered cars, which may not be a deal-breaker for expensive cars as the absolute costs will remain more or less the same for all diesel engines but that will make small diesel cars much more expensive. This coupled with the shorter shelf life of diesel vehicles in some markets will see more petrol cars coming to the fore and Ford just upped the ante with this new engine.
The major headline on the new engine is its power output, which is 96PS in this case, much more than the 88PS on the Figo and Aspire. The Twin Independent Variable Camshaft Timing — which is what TiVCT expands to — means that the intake and exhaust valves are controlled by independent camshafts that can be run at different speeds depending on the throttle position delivering a blend of power and performance. The TiVCT technology is also present in the Figo, but this is a new engine derived from what Ford calls the “Dragon” family and is essentially a smaller variant of the 1.5-litre petrol on the facelifted EcoSport, maintaining the same three-cylinder layout. Ford claims that the car will deliver a fabulous fuel economy of over 19 km per litre, but with some very vigorous driving — we were on the Sambhar Salt lake after all sliding around in the first and second gear — I still got more than 11 km per litre.
If you were to get so much power from a small engine earlier, you would usually fit a turbo like Ford’s earlier EcoBoost or the BoosterJet on the Maruti Baleno RS. This car on the other hand is naturally aspirated. So there is no huge kick when you go past a certain point in the rev range, and the power delivery is linear. In fact, this engine, like its bigger brother on the EcoSport, delivers much of its power at the middle of the range. We did not get a chance to see the power and torque charts but that is plainly obvious when you push the car. And despite the power, you do get the sense that the Freestyle has been geared to provide economy. That is not saying it is not fun.
I had a soft spot for the old Ford Fusion, which I drove during my early days of reviewing cars. The Fusion handled like a car on rails, this at a time when most cars in India had severe understeer. And the Freestyle, well despite the suspension and other tweaks, handles superbly. If one were using the functional roof rails to carry two mountain bikes as Ford’s promotional images showed off, the Freestyle definitely does not compromise on that front. So, the Freestyle ticks off the boxes, economical, rough-road capable, fun to drive and has a nice infotainment system.
But would you buy oneIJ As mentioned earlier, attempts by Toyota and Volkswagen did not exactly set the market alight. Ford has made changes to the Freestyle that might appeal to some buyers and it is sufficiently different from the Figo. But the question as always is one of price. Now Ford did not announce the price of the Freestyle, but I am guessing it will not get into EcoSport territory even at the top of the range. Ford is promising that the Freestyle will come with the SYNC3 touchscreen even at mid-trim models and that all variants will have airbags with the top Titanium-spec getting six airbags. The Ford Figo with a petrol engine currently costs around `5.3 to 6.3 lakhs and the base model of the EcoSport with a more powerful engine costs `7.7 lakhs, these prices being ex-showroom Delhi. I can only predict that the Freestyle will slot in around `5.75 - 6.75 lakhs for the variant we drove. Is that good valueIJ I think so but markets are stranger than you think.