The new Ford EcoSport facelift is finally here after making us wait a long long time I’ve driven all three drivetrains on the new car so, let’s get straight into it the lightening blue might look a lot like the kinetic blue it’s a lot brighter in the sunshine is where you really get to see it it pops much more now, the whole focus of the redesign is up here in the face and seems to be to make the car a lot more butch more macho and you get that straight away the hood is a little bit raised it’s got a little bit of muscle coming through it the grille which used to be a split sort of two-part grille has become this one big grille which is pretty much similar to some of other SUV’s in Ford’s global line-up including of course the Endeavour that we have and the handlamp is a little bit bigger daytime running light kind of seems a little bit forced at first but does work well also good thing to have in the segment as we know foglamp is also exaggerated and large so that the whole face looks more imposing and a lot more bold the wheels are also 17-inch now one size bigger with a new pattern so the car looks very different up front and would’ve been nice to have a very new rear as well especially LED elements may be in the taillights but I’m not complaining too much as the rear still goes with the whole restyle the new seats are better padded with better side and under thigh support of course, this is just a facelift and so to once again reiterate, there is no change in rear legroom the boot though now gets a false bottom which reveals either a deeper cargo space if you remove that tray that it covers or a concealed area that let’s you keep valuables like laptops for instance out of sight so much curiosity about this dragon engine now the 1.5L, 3 cylinder does become the segment’s most powerful. it all sounded really good on paper and so, I was very curious to drive it for that reason now, it won’t disappoint you as such but having said that it also won’t excite you and that’s where I think Ford has very obviously gone towards fuel efficiency and you know the engine mapping has been done keeping that mileage number in mind and, I can understand why that’s happened because the last time around with the ecoboost it was a fun to drive, really exciting engine but it let a lot of people down in terms of fuel efficiency because you have to sort of know how to drive it this engine will not have that problem at all and it’s been well mapped to the automatic tranmission which btw is nice & quick but, yes you’ll feel a little bit disappointed because typical from Ford cars you want that sporty, edgy performance and some of that punch is just missing the petrol automatic will do very well in city traffic though as gears hold, and there aren’t frequency downshifts it’s only when you try and push it hard that it’s going seem wanting the torquey 1.5 TDCi diesel is heaps of fun as it always was and you will find no change between the new and old car in pure performance terms prices have been a big surprise which no changes variant for variant on the new EcoSport now it never happens in the auto industry and it is a welcome move from Ford keeping the EcoSport really competitive and now with the updated car Ford India relinquishes European exports in favour of much larger order from the American market that will also get this EcoSport for the first time so, expect the EcoSport to likely fire up volumes and the fortunes once more for Ford India