The EcoSport is currently being assembled in India at the factory in Chennai for both the domestic and the export markets. But now, the Euro-spec version of the car will be made in Craiova, Romania. The change will take some time to be implemented and we expect it to come into effect only later in 2017.
Ford currently makes the B-MAX and the 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine, and the small MPV hasn't seen much sales in the past few years, which is why there is the issue of underutilised production capacity. However, this will change once Ford starts to manufacture the EcoSport here.
The car maker will be investing €200 million to get the facility ready to put together the EcoSport. The Romanian-built model will be quite different to the one we see now and ford says that the car will go through some changes, both stylistically and from a technical point of view, however, they haven't elaborated on it yet.
Interestingly, Ford mentions it is analysing the prospects of adding other products to the assembly lines at the factory in Craiova and we'll know about this soon. However, this might also mean that more products will come to India or Ford is already looking out for other export markets after having freed some capacity. We'll probably see the car heading to the North American market, which is the home base for Ford. These plans are yet to be disclosed and we will wait for Ford to confirm on them.
