I agree with you. I realized now that it seems that I was saying that Ford isn't working hard. However, that was not what I meant, I was instead trying to justify them working on updating the features on the Ecosport.
I agree that it is difficult to survive in India, especially to compete with the products already there by the major players. Ecosport did get a good head start as it was almost a segment starter (considering the Premier Rio never got noticed) and it took some time for the competition to bring in cars in the segment. Kwid also had gained a good market share as it went into a new segment, and gained market attention.
I don't think it would be easy to Ford to bring in their global hits and expect them to gain a good market in India. Ford has taken some effort to understand the market , and we can see that in the Aspire and Figo. The earlier cars were purely enthusiasts choices, and did not do well with the public in general. Most of the time Ford has got dead on arrival cars in India due to bad pricing. The Global Fiesta for example came with a very high pricing, and though Ford did a correction later, it did not get enough market. Similarly, with the Endeavour, the price correction can be made into a stock chart looking at the frequent corrections and addition and removal of versions.
I feel they need to work more on their pricing and marketing now, and get more visibility in our market. The brand awareness needs to be improved, if Ford wants to really change its sales numbers. I am seeing the change with the Ford Freestyle, in terms of marketing, but I hope they do a good job with the pricing.
Still I dont think bringing in Global Fiesta or even pricing a car right will give Ford the required numbers,
The biggest example is the 2011-2017 SWift
The Ford Figo hatch launched in 2010 is in any way far better car than the SWift
It has more space inside, bigger boot, better ride quality and handling, built better, has a better audios system, better diesel engine and in reality there wasnt much that was done wrong in the Gen I Figo and yet its sales was just a spike for 2 years and again it came down to regular numbers of sub 2000 cars by 2015, then they launched the 2016 Figo with way better engine, more space, slightly smaller boot yet larger than 2011-2017 SWift and more features and space and comfort and cheaper price tag than SWift and yet it couldnt do anything to the SWift which despite being an inferior car right from 2011 -2017 consistently made 10,000-18000 cars per month without even knowing the Figo was in market
This shows my reasoning, ie whether it be Ford,or any European brand it is not going to sell here in India
If anything it should have a Suzuki or a Hyundai badge to make decent numbers
The Ecosport started the compact SUV segment and since Maruti didnt have any car in the 10+ lakh range it didnt have any competition so it was a success and even today we see the Brezza is outselling Ecosport in 2-3:1 ratio , so I feel Ford should stop fighting Maruti and Hyundai in India and just keep on building unique products and Freestyle is one such product , thats why I feel even though it wont be a sales hit, it will remain for a long time giving the brands B500 platform life for another 5 years.