[TROOPER]

As a Tata fanboy cringing at the Nexon Kraz edition and the latest move by Tata with the 'Safari' edition, this comes as good news.

Now Ford can take the cake with the worst 'edition' version to be driven on Indian roads.

I can understand playing around with colors and alloys to make a car stand out. But what's with those God-awful 'flair' decals? Why ruin a good looking car?

What's wrong with these executives who take such calls?

What should we expect next? A Renault Triber Formula 1 edition? Or a Maruti Baleno Battle Tank edition?

[gururajrv]

BS6 has been making manufacturers go all haywire & desperate with justifying the additional cost on the engine compliance to the visual mods that look so shoddy!

Atleast, Ford, Tata, Mahindra have retained their good old diesels and have ensured in making them compliant to BS6 unlike major player like Maruti who have withdrawn themselves from taking away diesels.

One other point is that these 3 manufacturers are producing strong cars. I am happy with their approach of safety. Tata was smart enough to align the facelift of their Nexon, Tiago & Tigor with BS6 introduction somehow justifying the additional cost with uplift of the visual quotient.

Anyways, Ford could’ve done better with themselves.

Regards,

RV

[sooshan]

Freestyle was a good car. It is unfortunate to see such a cheap looking graphics on the car. It is almost like a sticker job gone awfully bad at a corner graphics shop!!!

[kiku007]

Originally Posted by Samba

The Ikon 1.3 was launched with a pushrod engine. That engine had problems and was not good to drive too.
Later Ford put the 1.3L ROCAM engine and named it as Flair. It was a definite improvement from the earlier 1.3L pushrod engine.
The Flair had a good low-end and mid-range drivability, but on highways it definitely felt under-powered.

Back in 2003 when this engine was introduced, the other cars from the same category were the Accent 1.5, Baleno, Old Honda city, Opel corsa 1.4/1.6, Maruti Esteem or the Ikon 1.6. All these cars were more or less in the same price bracket and each of the cars were hoot to drive.
All the mentioned cars were powered by engines producing 85-100 Bhp, whereas this was the only car having a 70 Bhp engine.
This car definitely had a good city drivability, but it was definitely under-powered & felt anaemic on the highways.

Now, if other categories like handling, fuel efficiency, reliability are considered, it was definitely a good car.
So when a car is considered from a broader perspective, then there is nothing wrong with the Freestyle Flair too, apart from it's tacky looks!

Anyways, I hope my post didn't hurt you.
In nutshell, what i meant was
1.3 Flair had a under-powerd engine.
The Freestyle Flair looks tacky.

The Ford Ikon came with a number of different engine options over its lifetime.

The worst are the 1.3L Endura (pushrod) petrol and the 1.8L diesel engines.

Sometime in 2003 Ford launched the 1.3L ROCAM petrol engine and gave the suffix 'NXT' to the Ikon badge. I had the Ikon 1.3L NXT with the ROCAM engine. It made only around 70bhp and on-paper it was below the Accent. However in real-world conditions the car was way more fun to drive than the Accent. The 1.3L ROCAM engine was rev-happy but would loose steam at around 140 kmph. We've had many discussions on this forum 14 years back on why Hyundai was better on-paper but Ford was better on-road.

Sometime in 2004 or 2005 (I'm not too sure) Ford replaced the "NXT" suffix with "Flair".

Coming back to the topic. Let's consider what all Ford has tried with the current generation Figo.
1. Tried to copy Maruti's success and went soft on build-quality and handling.
2. Tried to save face with the Figo S version.
3. Tried to make an "SUV" out of the Figo and sell it as the Freestyle.
4. I don't know what they tried to do with the BLU variant.
4. Tried to apply garish stickers and colours and sell it as the Flair.

The only thing they didn't try was to stick to the original formula of the first generation Figo.

[karan85]

Originally Posted by Samba

Back in 2003 when this engine was introduced, the other cars from the same category were the Accent 1.5, Baleno, Old Honda city, Opel corsa 1.4/1.6, Maruti Esteem or the Ikon 1.6. All these cars were more or less in the same price bracket and each of the cars were hoot to drive.
All the mentioned cars were powered by engines producing 85-100 Bhp, whereas this was the only car having a 70 Bhp engine.
This car definitely had a good city drivability, but it was definitely under-powered & felt anaemic on the highways.

Now, if other categories like handling, fuel efficiency, reliability are considered, it was definitely a good car.
1.3 Flair had a under-powerd engine.
The Freestyle Flair looks tacky.

Actually Ikon Flair was a fair bit cheaper than the Baleno and the drive was better than the Corsa(even the 1.6) so was the space. We got ours for 5.6X on road at the time IIRC.

The only other option we looked at closely was the Esteem which honestly was the car I wanted to buy, but one drive of the 1.3 Ikon was enough to pull me away in the other direction. Actually what I wanted to stress upon was the fact that the 70BHP in reality felt much more compared to the 80+ of some of the other cars had. I had seen lots of people write that engine off without having spent time driving it hence my response to your post. An no it did not hurt me at all

[subhraDS]

Flair edition will be launched in a month or two, got a verbal confirmation from JSP Ford, Bangalore. Though they don't have the brochure or pricing info,SA mentioned that there was a training regarding the same.
Flair will be the top variant and will come with with Sync system.

From the leaked images few pointers can be made -
1. Steering wheel is leather wrapped like figo blu (image 4 bottom right).
2. It has sync system, not fly audio (last image bottom left).

[JithinR]

Originally Posted by subhraDS

Flair will be the top variant and will come with with Sync system.

From the leaked images few pointers can be made -
1. Steering wheel is leather wrapped like figo blu (image 4 bottom right).
2. It has sync system, not fly audio (last image bottom left).

It would actually be nice to see the sync3 system retained. Could you please clarify which images you are referring to in your post? Are these the ones in the opening post.

[subhraDS]

Originally Posted by JithinR

Could you please clarify which images you are referring to in your post? Are these the ones in the opening post.

Yes, in the opening post. Can be zoomed to 100% to see those details, better if seen from a desktop/laptop.
The SA said Sync was mentioned in their training as well, not sure about the version though.

Another reason I am hopeful that the flair is not something done by a dealer or aftermarket is the inner door handle colour,it matches with the theme. Ford has done exactly the same with blu variant.
Leather wrapping in the steering wheel looks OEM quality too.

[Venkatesh]

Ford Freestyle Flair Variant Spied At Dealership Yard













https://www.drivespark.com/four-whee...ls-032100.html

[JithinR]

Video walkaround of the new flair variant. To be frank i closed the video the moment I saw that it had the flyaudio system (opened it a second time just to get the link).

https://youtu.be/Ry9OGAyzYtU

P.S. Thanks for nothing Ford!

[psmenon]

Is it just me who feel pretty bad about the way Figo looks right now? the new variants are killing what I think was brilliant design. Was considering Figo sports before I opted for Renault duster and I used to drool whenever I see Figo sports on road, but these variants are just killing it(in the bad sense).

[TusharK]

Ford Freestyle Flair Edition launched at Rs 7.69 lakh

Ford has launched a new top-spec variant of the Freestyle called the Flair. It is available with petrol and diesel engine options at an introductory price of Rs. 7.69 lakh and Rs. 8.79 lakh respectively.



The Freestyle Flair comes with a few cosmetic updates including black alloy wheels, a black roof with red roof rails, red ORVM caps and red front and rear skid plates as well as red and black graphics. On the inside, the car get black and grey upholstery and black door handles with red accents.

The Freestyle Flair is equipped with a 7-inch touchscreen infotainment head-unit that has in-built navigation. The car comes with automatic headlamps, automatic wipers, reverse parking camera, remote central locking and automatic climate control. The FordPass smartphone app is also available at no additional cost. It uses a cloud-connected device that can be be used to check vehicle health, know remaining fuel levels and distance to empty in real time.



The Freestyle Flair is available with a 1.2-litre, 3-cylinder petrol that produces 95 BHP and 119 Nm and a 1.5-litre diesel that makes 99 BHP and 215 Nm of torque. Both engines come mated to a 5-speed manual transmission.

In terms of safety equipment, the Freestyle Flair is equipped with Active Rollover Prevention (ARP), ESC and 6 airbags.

Link to Team-BHP News

[Aafaq]

This Flair edition surely deserves a place in 'weird and wacky mod' thread.
Instead of these cosmetic changes, Ford could have added the missing features like projector setup, sync3 system etc
Ford needs to learn marketing from Maruti and designing from Hyundai.

[ram.iyer95]

Originally Posted by psmenon

Is it just me who feel pretty bad about the way Figo looks right now? the new variants are killing what I think was brilliant design. Was considering Figo sports before I opted for Renault duster and I used to drool whenever I see Figo sports on road, but these variants are just killing it(in the bad sense).

Me too. The older Figo Sports in white was such a looker; I particularly liked the clean front end. The newer Figo Blu's front end doesn't look as good to me, with those unnecessary black inserts above the fog lamps and the bluish design elements. They make the car look like it is screaming for attention. But yeah, as design is a subjective aspect, there may be many who appreciate the new design elements as well.

I like the fact that the Figo still has proper, functional bumpers at both ends, something that's becoming a rarity these days.

[Quinn]

To me, it is a kind of mystery as to what Ford leadership perceives as a customer requirement. Why don't they give sync 3 as an option?