A reason for long waiting periods: 1 out of 5 made-in-India Ford EcoSports exported

Snapshot: Ford India is exporting one out of every five EcoSports built at its Maramalainagar factory, off Chennai. The 80:20 domestic sales to export ratio is leading to steadily rising waiting periods as prospective EcoSport buyers continue to book the crossover. Rising Ford EcoSport waiting periods has prompted many buyers to look at alternate choices such as the Renault Duster and Nissan Terrano.

A major dampener for someone interested in buying a Ford EcoSport is the unreasonably long waiting period that the crossover is saddled with. Adding to this dampener is Ford India’s decision to stop fresh bookings of the 1 liter EcoBoost turbo petrol and 1.5 liter Ti-VCT naturally aspirated petrol engined variants of the EcoSport in order to focus on exports and diesel variant deliveries.

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At a time such as this, the company’s continued focus on the export market due to better profit margins on the back of a depreciated Indian rupee (vis-a-vis the US Dollar/EU Euro) has left prospective buyers fuming. While Ford India produced a total of 45,727  units of the EcoSport until December, the American automaker exported 9,647 units, a number that represents over 20% of the total production.

The EcoSport sold in India is available with three engine and two gearbox options. The petrol engined EcoSport gets a 1.5 liter Ti-VCT motor (108 Bhp-140 Nm) and a 1 liter EcoBoost motor (120 Bhp-170 Nm) while the diesel engined EcoSport is powered by a 1.5 liter TDCI (90 Bhp-205 Nm) motor. The petrol and diesel engined EcoSports are sold with a 5 speed manual gearbox as standard.

The 1.5 liter Ti-VCT petrol model gets a 6 speed dual clutch automatic gearbox as an option, a best-in-class feature. The EcoSport’s major selling points have been its sharp pricing – now somewhat negated by multiple price hikes – and an extensive list of features and creature comforts. Click here to watch CarToq’s video review of the Ford EcoSport Diesel.

Source BusinessStandard