2018 is too long. Will this City remain same until 2018?! Or at least I feel that the City category might not exist by then. Probably Ford is planning(or at least should plan) something different to expand dealer base to tier II and III cities and become reachable to it's customers. IMO this is the reason why Figo twins didn't do well as expected.
Not just in tier II but even in tier I cities Ford aint doing well with Figo and Aspire, the reason is simple, too much competition, see the 4-8 lakhs ex showroom segment is too complicated, we have sub 4m hatch backs like Figo, Swift,Bolt,Brio,etc
Then another segment the premium hatch back segment the Baleno,i20 elite, Jazz, Polo, and the suv segment like Tata Safari,tuv300,tuv100,
Then the compact sedan segment, the Aspire,Amaze,Dzire,etc
Its all totally jumbled up, inbetween that if a product has to shine, either it should have the vast servicr back up or at least a name, like that brands that car is extremely reliable, which is not entirely true in case of old Fords like Ikon,Fusion,Mondeo etc, those memories still haunt lot of potential buyers,
So this time Fords effort was solid, and they arr doing fine by the numbers I see,
Back in 2010 Figo had to fight just 2 cars, Swift and i10, no other cars were there in market and prominently Figo and Swift only had diesels whereas nowadays all brands have diesel and petrol with insane mileage srickers,cheap price tags,lot of showrooms,so obviously a good product like Ford cannot shine as it needs to.
Regarding the B500 Fiesta its true Ford is too late to party, 2018 is too long and by then mostly the compact suvs will be the star of the market, but Ford already has one, so no need for improvisation there but a company is established in India only if it has a C sedan, the market leaders all have 1 and they do pretty good numbers and the sedan is a classic styling, wont die off, it will relmain,i suspect the 2018 Fiesta to be a market average seller, like maybe 1000-1500 units a month maximum, and that will do just fine for Ford,
Ford is focusing more on exports from India, we see Ford sold just 5.7k cars domestic and exports were 11.5k, so India will remain a small market for Ford even after 2020 but ots importsnt to them as the export from here is pretty good and strategically gives them lot of gain,
So even though I like Ford, the hard fact is, the brand wont flourish in India, it will stay and satisfy a small bunch of people who like their styling,features,value,performance etc