The concept behind a concept

Roominess. Cost of ownership. Well-crafted interiors. Clever storage. Connectivity that allows customers to bring their digital lifestyle into the car. These are the attributes that Ford Motor Co gave its design team when it set out to come up with a compact sedan. Ford unveiled the concept of this sub-four metre sedan just ahead of the Delhi Auto Expo.

“The mandate we gave the team was to create a vehicle where the customer can expect the unexpected. That is the vision of the Ford Figo concept,” says Kumar Galhotra, Vice-President – Engineering, Ford Motor Co.

Galhotra, who has been with Ford since 1988 and has held various positions in product development and product strategy, says over the years, customers have had to make some compromises in order to justify the cost of ownership. “Our proposition is that we can serve the market better so that the customers wouldn’t have to make those compromises,” he says.

Package efficiency is important to achieve that roominess, according to him. How cleverly the interiors are designed to both provide a real roominess and a sense of roominess. You can do several clever things on how you position the occupants, how they interact with the seats, where their feet are, where their hip point is, to provide them a comfortable environment and a sense of space inside the car.

The design team took into account the fact that a lot of Indian customers are chauffeur driven and hence rear seat comfort was one of the attributes it paid attention to. The company picked the Delhi show to unveil the concept because this particular segment is so big and so critical for this particular market, according to Galhotra.

As in the case of the EcoSport, the lead team for this project was in Brazil, which took inputs from all markets. There were Indian engineers who were part of the team. Galhotra said while the parts designs would be the same, Ford’s aim was to localise to the extent possible. It was best to localise as much of the parts as possible for macro-economic reasons and for protecting against exchange fluctuations.

Ehab Kaoud, Chief Designer, Ford North America, admits that the four-metre limit was a big challenge initially.

“How do we do this right. It comes back to working hard and getting the proper proportions and in dividing up the car in the right way so that it doesn’t look like it is compromised. Because 4,000 mm means horizontally you are squeezing it and vertically you are pulling. It makes the car usually look clumsy. How do we take care of that from the surfacing standpoint, from the proportions of the glass to the body. The wheels are sitting on the ground, planted and glued to the ground so that it doesn’t look like it is going to fall over. I kept telling the designers no tin can. We have to give it muscularity. We have to give it fullness in sections. That it looks more expensive than it is.”

How did they achieve the space on the inside? Kaoud says that if you look at the relationship of the A pillar to the C pillar and the back, and where the wheels are at, it is a small footprint on the outside with the wheels pulled out as far as possible and the A pillar pulling in both ways to give the internal area more space. And, then the rest of it is sort of icing on the cake. You put a line here and there to accentuate that look and make sure it doesn’t look compromised.