Back in 2019, Ford and Mahindra formed a venture (with the latter owning a 51 percent stake) to run Ford’s operations in India. The partnership involved an idea to develop shared models for our market. Now, a picture of what’s possibly the primary product developed under this partnership (a Ford SUV) has surfaced online which claims to offer us a glimpse of its front profile.
The Ford SUV is probably going to be supported the upcoming second-gen Mahindra XUV500’s platform. As evident from the spy shots, it could feature a totally different dress hat for a replacement exterior design. Images also reveal a typical Ford-like black front grille. it’s expected to feature LED illumination at the front and rear.
Ford could pack the SUV with a good set of features including Ford’s connected car tech, control , and a touchscreen infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity. Safety might be taken care of by quite two airbags, vehicle stability control, and level-1 autonomous driver assistance technology that’s likely to feature on the second-gen Mahindra XUV500 also .
Under the hood, the Ford SUV is probably going to use an equivalent engines because the upcoming Mahindra SUV: a group of two .0-litre turbo-petrol and a couple of .2-litre diesel engines. We expect it to be offered with both manual and automatic drive options along side an AWD (all-wheel-drive) drivetrain also .
We expect Ford to launch its mid-size SUV supported the second-gen XUV500 sometime in late-2021. It might be priced within the same ballpark because the Mahindra SUV. Ford’s mid-size SUV will rival the likes of the Tata Harrier, Jeep Compass, Hyundai Tucson, MG Hector, and therefore the second-gen Mahindra XUV500.