"Following a customer-preference survey, it was found out that several features of the Fiesta were not finding favour with customers. Hence, we decided to make a car which was totally different from the Fiesta. It will have a boot unlike the Fiesta, but will be a smaller, comfortable car. It was found that consumers wanted a car with a boot," said a senior production manager.

From November 24, we would roll out 60-70 cars a day. If production is carried out in three shifts, we could manufacture about 200 cars a day, but this is unlikely for the first year at least," said another official.Despite the extra capacity and flexibility of plant in manufacturing, Ford India managing director Philip Spender said that, to start with, the plant wouldonly concentrate on the C-195 model.

Spender was disappointed at the higher number of diesel vehicles that the company was selling vis-a-vis the petrol version of the Escort. He attributed this to the artificial higher pricing of petrol. The diesel version of the Escort accounts for 70 per cent of the company's total sales of the model. "If the same discrepancy continues, the picture might be the same for the C-195 as well. We hope that with emission norms becoming more stringent in the future the anomalies would be sorted out," said Spender.Ford, which was planning to dispense with the bookings route for selling its cars, is now having second thoughts following the phenomenal response to the Tata Indica. On the impending competition from fellow global giants, all of which have lined up plans for new models, Spender said that several of them had not pumped in anywhere near the kind of money that Ford had done in the country, and, hence, they may not hesitate to walk out of the country if the recessionarytrend persists.

Ford to hike its stake to 94 per cent in venture

The $ 165-million Ford Motor Company will hike its stake in the Indian venture to 94 per cent closer to the launch of its C-195 model. "We have got FIPB approval for hiking our stake to 94 per cent. But as of now we are still at 78 per cent. We would up it to 94 per cent closer to the launch when we would need to pump in funds to meet launch expenses," said Ford India managing director Philip Spender. Ford and M&M had started off with a 50:50 joint venture. Recently, M&M decided to freeze investments in the venture as it had decided to focus on its project "Scorpio".