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What is it?
Starting from Ford Escort in 1998 we have seen couple of Mondeos on road whom people must have forgotten by now, however the Ikon is the top selling model from Ford, out of which I like the Ikon Sxi, the one with the sporty bumper. Following Ikon we have seen Fiesta & Fusion. Apart from those, Endeavour is the high end luxury SUV from Ford we can see on road.
Ikon unfortunately is going more towards rent a car market now a days & Fusion is discontinued.
What next ????
Here comes a new sunray from Ford, the Ford FIGO. Figo means 'Cool' in Italian language. Launched on 9 March, 2010, The Figo is Ford's 'designed for India' car and priced to enter into the price war. The car is made in India with almost all the indigenous content which would lead to cheaper spares too.
Looking at this product if you observe the feature package of this vehicle, you will definitely conclude that this is almost the maximum one can expect from the given price tag.
Figo is available in 8 variants (Lxi, Exi, Zxi, Titanium) – 4 variants in 1.2L Petrol engine & rest in 1.4L diesel engine & is confidently placed in the hatchback segment, unlike that of Fusion which was a hybrid of hatchback & a SUV.
Outer impression:
This beauty is placed in the market keeping in mind to boost the image of Ford; there is no compromise on features, built quality & looks, personally speaking.
The design seems to be built somewhere around Fusion, the chassis base may be the same.
FRONT:
Looking from front, you see the traditional hatchback bonnet integrated with modern massive headlamps whose design is inspired from "the human eye". The radiator grille is huge for better air intake which will keep the all aluminum engine cool. The bumpers are flexible & elastic enough to take up the dash & retain its original shape. The bumpers are equipped with facility of fog lamps which can be assembled with standard lamps from Ford at an extra penny.
SIDE:
As I had mentioned, the car looks somewhat like the Fusion & you can observe the same below.
The two tone mirrors looks awesome on bright body colored Figos. The door handles are conventional & nothing special in looks, however the doors gets locked automatically if the car exceeds 7kmph - better for your safety. The side indicators are attractive & are stretched long for better looks & catching attention of the public.
The beauty rests on 175 / 65 R14 wheels with wheel caps over them. This is a point where Ford could have done a better job; the wheel cap design is somwhat OK but not very appealing.
BACK:
Here is something special which is not offered by competitors. When you cruze to high speed & apple brakes, the tail lamps are no more the normal tail lamps, they start fluctuating - grabbing attention of vehicles behind, making their drivers alert.
The rear wiper is equipped with the power wash, which will take care of the rear shield cleanliness & are integrated with defogger to keep it mist free. Another intelligent feature - if the front wiper is activated & you engage the transmission in reverse gear the rear wiper will automatically start its job.
Ambience and theme:
Ford has tried to do something different here. We have observed that the Ford team has given attention not only to the features but also to the minute detailing of the gizmos present in the car. The interiors rules not only in the aesthetics but also in the ergonomics department. When you enter the car you see a clay amber color dashboard (may not appeal to everyone) but for me this something new & people will start liking it over a period of time. If you want something regular, a full black dashboard is also available.
Since we have started with dashboard let us explore it more. All the features & gizmos are user friendly. It's true when you need to open the boot of your other hatch , you definitely have to open the door, knee down to have a look at the lever & pull it, but it's not the case here. The buttons are integrated in the dashboard.
Steering wheel has a look of a mature business class sedan which contradicts to the young & sporty dashboard. The Speedometer is huge compared to the RPM & fuel gauge meter.
The displays of the car are in RED. The tachometer has multifunctional display; you can shuffle it to trip meter and can also check how much kms your car can go with the available fuel.
The higher variant comes with the factory fitted music system which is Bluetooth enabled.
You can synchronize your Bluetooth enabled phone with your car, audio streaming is possible too.
The gear lever is comfortably placed & is smooth enough while shifting.
The front seats are hydraulically adjustable for height and that's just great to see. The rear seat lies down to create a huge space behind. However the rear seat is not 1/4th : 3/4th, it's a single back design.
SPACE:
The car does not compromise in space. The Figo is whole heartedly stretched to 3.8 meters long & 1.68 meters wide which is better than its competitors & the head room is also very decent.
The leg room is as good as a sedan for both front & back and it doesn't mean that the boot space is less. The boot space is so huge that the dealer had confidently kept a huge baggage in the car for demo.
On the road:
As far as the powertrain is concerned the Figo is blessed with 1.2L Petrol & 1.4L Diesel engine married to a 5 speed manual transmission.
1.2 L SEFI engine produces 52.4kW of power & max torque of 71Nm & 1.4.L common rail diesel engine is capable of producing max power of 50Kw & torque to 160 Nm.
The front wheel drive Figo comes with front independent suspension & rear semi independent Twist Beam coil spring.
The steering is smooth & comfortable to handle & the combo switches for wiper & indicator are really-really awesome in design.
When we cruze it:
The car will not stall when you pick it up on the first gear with a limited accelerator pedal pressed. The shifting is smooth as well. In most of the cars shifting up is smooth, but the real experience of the driving is judged during down shifting. Figo passed through as a good car, as there were no sudden jerks when we shifted from 3rd gear to 2nd gear where some of the available cars behave in a weird way.
The firing is the thing I liked the most. Although the cabin is silent you can feel the firing while you drive it rash. The firing resembles to that of a silent & pleasant version of a racing car.
Diesel Figo : you really feel the power when you pick the car in first gear. Now a question would have clicked in your mind that max power of Diesel is less than that of Max power of Petrol, why do you get the feeling of Diesel to be more powerful? The reason that the max torque is achieved at very less i.e. 2000 rpm in Diesel version. When you pick the vehicle from 0 by pressing the gas pedal you are already in range of Max Torque which gives you a feeling of manouering a car easily to the substantial speed where you can shift up & take the speed further.
The diesel Figo is experienced to have a great pick up when you go on changing the gears up & at the same time go on increasing & maintaining the speed. However if the speed is interrupted for a while. For eg. in 2nd gear by pressing clutch longer and slowing down a bit due to traffic ahead & you suddenly decide to take up the speed, the response you get is not so well. You have to wait for the power to pull your car.
The turning radius is less then 5m, easy for you take it anywhere you wish.
We should really appreciate the efforts taken by the Ford Team on minute detailing in building Figo.
What's it up against ?
The Figo is against Hyundai I10, Maruti Ritz, Indica Vista, Aveo Uva, Skoda Fabia, VW Polo, Maruti Swift.
Why would you buy it?
A fresh product in market, made & sourced in India - maintenance advantage, Overall Built Quality, Value for money, Efforts of Ford on added features which are unique, spacious.
Why you wouldn't buy it?
The future trend of car design is such that the A pillars are shifted towards headlamps, the dash board is huge & the bonnet is small. This results in better confidence in driving, better aerodynamics, cabin space. Overall length of the car ratio is more. The Figo comes in the traditional range.
The rear tray at boot could have been better.
Pricing (Ex-Showroom)
3.57 to 5.4 Lakh Ex-Pune
Thanks :
Special Thanks to Planet Ford , Kothrud Pune for arranging the rides for Rushlane.
Gallery
Ford Figo : Story of a Defective LEMON (1.2yrs of stressful ownership)
Dear All,
My figo was booked in February 2010. The booking process was quite smooth and so was the dealerships attitude(Bhavna FORD) by promising to attach at least some freebies in such a hot selling car and give me the best quote in whole Mumbai/Navi Mumbai area.
The Figo was delivered on time as it was promised, precisely on 1st June 2010. it was a birthday present gifted to me by mom.
The initial excitement of having procured my own car (though as a gift by mom) kept me satisfied with the purchase and me was happy too... albeit for sometime only !
The nightmare soon started. it was after one month of purchase in July few problems started to occur in the car. i was quite unnerved by the overall thought of having bought a car after paying such a huge sum and yet it getting little mischievous in so little time.
Took the car soon to the trusted Wasan FORD (Deonar, Mumbai) and explained them the issues that i was facing after my first month of purchase. Never knew this same \"Wasan Ford dealership\" would end up becoming my second home with me sharing very good love/hate relationship with their representatives based on my particular interactions with respect to the problems that simply kept on growing along with my aging car (Prematurely though!). sometimes it was cordial and sometimes it did get UGLY. not that much of a problem though, they are not robots hired by Ford, and sometimes they might have not liked their work to be focused around just one car belonging to one person, who just kept on coming with complaints (me).
Enough of the prelude...
Let me make you aware of the problem that are currently making my life much worse than hell, and sometimes also provoking me to file a legal suit against Ford INDIA for selling such a substandard product in the name of \'Value for money\' proposition.
In past 18 Months, I have faced most of the complaints that i could have only accrued knowledge about after going through many different threads from T-BHP`s own forum, but in my ONE n only ONE car (FIGO).
let me just brief some here: (i am excluding the common FIGO issues here though, as FORD is yet to come up with solutions for them. for example, Scraping, Headlight low visibility etc.)
1: Squeaking sound from Rear portion of the car --->
it got rectified only after 5 times they performed repairs on it and failing. Replacement worked!
2: Gear Lever being too hard --->
Its still worse than their own test drive vehicle which has already ran for 30,000kms and mine is just 23,200kms old. kindly note i have been complaining about the same from the very first month of purchase. Gear Mass was lubricated last time (dont know what it is though)
3: Mist & Fog composition in Headlamps --->
Was provided replacement for the same.
4: Rattling noises from dashboard, steering area, rear seats, front speaker compartments --->
got it rectified finally but only after repeated attempts by Wasan FORD (with little screw being tightened by FORD on this matter).
5: Mis-Alignment of bumper after accident repair job performed, Paint mis-match, lots of free DENTS as gift from dealership itself, seat-belt lock was broken, pinholes formed on all paint job done, paint peeling off from car`s exterior, paint bubble formation.. they are just too many related to paint especially... --->
whenever these problems occurred and were reported, they were attended to. Some got fixed, and some i am still living with
6: Soft Brakes --->
Dealership is not acknowledging it, cant make them understand.
have left any hope on getting it rectified. may be figo`s are built with dumb brakes.
7: Ac Cooling not Optimally --->
Got it rectified after they did some cleaning etc. I dont exactly know a technical term for that.
8: Hitch Hitch Hitch sound from space between the door and roof on driver side --->
at first, Ford simply didn\'t acknowledge it. most of it due to interference of Mr.Kalra (regional manager in that time) and his stern warning to the dealership to not to give in to any of my complaints, unless they are way too prominent to becomes a issue for FORD in the later period. but the dealership, at that time still performed the job on my insistence and got it rectified (yeah, wasan helped here).
9: Bad Pickupwas notified --->
ECU was reset, me still not happy with the pickup of the car, but again may be its how FIGO is built.
10: SOUND coming after pressing brakes, clutch and handbrake --->
Still exists and got it acknowledged today itself by ford SA
11: Rear washer failed twice --->
Got it replaced/repaired same number of times.
12: Water Leakage from right rear door-beadings and driver`s footwell --->
Got it repaired after 2 visits at Wasan Ford
13: Horn gone bad (twice) --->
Replaced once, will ask for the same again now
14: Suspensions making noise, they still do, but FORD said today the source are Handbrakes now --->
This especially happens when 2 or 3 people try sitting in the car and when they get up, somehow exerting and releasing the pressure on the shock absorbers. but still, the FORD`s SA was adamant its a handbrake cable problem and will try to rectify it next time i give my car at dealership (on monday, 3rd OCT 2011), not sure if i should give my car to them now though... also it happened earlier while going over humps..
15: Most CRITICAL one... Handbrake failure (still persists after making complaints in first few months of purchase and again numerous times and yet today it was acknowledged by FORD`s SA on 1st OCT 2011 in writing of still existing) --->
a problem so old and life threatening, somehow still finds its presence in our lives. seriously shame on FORD for this one and the brake issue.
16: Front Driver Seat had loose bolts. lost its position on its own while driving and i was freaking that close to DEATH ! --->
Bolts were tightened and it never happened again. But yeah, it still sends shivers down my spine.
17: Air Bag Safety Light ON --->
Happened 3 times, still does intermittently. have already sent pictures to Wasan Ford as proof. they did something they say, but still happens sometimes on its own.
18: Foul Smell from AC --->
Cleaning helped !
19: Left rear door making noise when someone sits --->
Was resolved after boiled down to the defective position of the levers in lock and the space provided in the car`s fitment for lock to attach on.
20: KHAS KHAS sound when car starts ALTERNATOR belt issue --->
no acknowledgement of the same when given for rectification, however today the FORD`s SA agreed its an fault with the alternator BELT !!!
21: My car doesn\'t only scrape but bottoms out the chassis with a nice thud sound --->
The car just used to scrape earlier. Now the lower portion simply hits, by hits I mean a loud thud noise comes from the underbelly of the car making it a daunting task to drive this cars thanks to the deadly combination of pathetic road conditions and ford figo\'s sub standard quality of suspension system installed. PROVED it to the Ford`s SA and he agreed reluctantly.
earlier he said that the speed breaker is uneven, that\'s why such a scathing thud on the chassis, later took him to panvel for another joy ride over humps.. he clearly saw a swift and indica filled with lot many people getting over the hump easily.. and ours THUMP`d like a bass machine. it pained me... its my moneys worth that`s getting thump`d from below !
so in his report he writes.. one pothole was uneven (thane belapur and reluctantly write 2 as normal when i persist and ask him logic behind such theory)
21: Front right door lock has failed now --->
Can be opened only from inside, not outside. Tried opening manually and automatically.. FAILED ! Ford`s SA acknowledged today.
There are many more issues.. just please go through the multiupload link attached here at the end of this post.
i have attached a .zip file containing my vehicles history, a set of mails that i`d sent to ford for help, the current issue that my car`s stuck on, the acknowledgement by FORD`s SA as of today etc etc..
somehow after having 6hrs of driving (126kms) today (from vashi to thane, then to JNPT and then to Panvel) to convince FORD`s SA of the existence of issues that i`d raised complaint for, has totally left me drained out and certainly with my above post i clearly have missed on writing with my usual flare, but what to do ? i feel like being brain-dead now !
sorry for the inconvenience guys..
Please Members of T-BHP go through all of it if you can find time and please let me know...
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