A trip to Ford India's Chennai plant

Ford India has created waves in the Indian hatchback market with its latest offering the Ford Figo. The phenomenal response from the buyers is keeping other car manufacturers on their toes.

But what makes the Ford Figo so popular? What goes into the car's making? Questions like these have been crowding the minds of many.

We got a chance to visit Ford Motor's Chennai plant, and talked about Ford's India plans in the coming future.

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Before we tell our experiences at the Ford plant here is a low down on all the details we gathered regarding Ford's future plans.

From our interactions with the company authorities we found out that right now Ford is focusing on the mass segment and there are possibilities of a new model being launched in the next 15 months.

We also learnt that Fiesta 1.6 might be discontinued in the future.

The company has no plans of launching the Ford GT and Ford Mustang in India and the Figo 1.6 L is also highly unlikely to be launched.

But Ford Figo may opt for more colours in the coming months.

We also got to know some interesting things about buyer tastes like - ebony interiors are somehow preferred over the coral dashboard and that 400 Figo cars are shipped everyday to the dealers.

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However, it was the Ford Motor's humongous Chennai plant that was a real eye catcher.

The state of the art facility, equipped with customised robots and a factory-trained staff of 4000, leaves no stone unturned to make each product special in its own way.

Currently, the plant only caters to the Indian market and helps keep the prices and maintenance cost of Ford vehicles low.

The company also tries to carry out a visual snapshot inspection of the key safety areas of the vehicle and produce a written report.

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At Ford Motor we also participated in the Driving Skills for Life program that was launched in August 2009 and is a venture in driving training systems and road safety consultancy.

The program gives you information on things such as precautionary measures while driving, safety belt usage, adjusting rear view and side view mirrors, avoiding distractions while driving, maintaining a safe three second distance between vehicles, switching of the engine selectively etc.

Overall, the visit to the Ford Chennai plant was an interesting one. Ford's current portfolio includes Ford Endeavour, Ford Fiesta, Ford Fusion, Ford Ikon, and Ford Figo.

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