The Ford EcoSport which was launched a year back garnered a huge amount of interest from buyers and the vehicle managed to bag record bookings in no time. Since the compact SUV was offered as a huge value-for-money proposition many customers who were actually considering premium hatchbacks and entry-level sedans shifted their focus to the EcoSport. With the huge number of bookings that Ford received, the company failed to keep pace with the rising demand and supply was very limited. This led to huge waiting periods ranging from 8-12 months for certain variants of the vehicle.
Now, Ford has announced that dealers will start accepting bookings for the EcoSport yet again. The company may have increased its production capacity at the Chennai plant to keep up with the huge demand for the vehicle. Earlier Ford was facing time constraints since many suppliers couldn’t supply important components but now it seems Ford has ironed out all the issues pertaining to timely production and deliveries of the compact SUV. The waiting period for the EcoSport will come down now and even though the vehicle might not be available for immediate delivery, we are sure that the waiting time will be reasonable.
Ford received many awards for the EcoSport but the company hiked prices of the SUV twice by significant amounts. This caused a bit of a concern among buyers and many of them shifted their bookings to vehicles from other manufacturers. Ford also got some negative points when it deleted few features from the EcoSport. When the SUV’s waiting period was high, Ford dealers were asking customers to shift their bookings to the Figo or Fiesta but most buyers considered other SUVs like the Nissan Terrano and Renault Duster. With few more competitors entering the compact SUV segment soon, Ford needs to be careful to not make any more mistakes to lose out on sales.
