Ford Endeavour Automatic for India soon

UPDATE:

Ford India has launched its new Ford Endeavour Automatic SUV with 5-speed automatic transmission, on September 9, 2009, that takes the Toyota Fortuner head-on, with its aggressive pricing.

So there is a new bad boy in town? Ford is not giving up so easily. After the much-anticipated launch of the Toyota Fortuner and seeing the very welcoming market for it, Ford India has decided to launch an automatic version of its popular SUV the Ford Endeavour in India.

Photo: Ford Endeavour Thunder top end-model in India

Speaking to the media, Ford India president and managing director, Michael Boneham, Ford India president and managing director said that the company plans to launch the Ford Endeavour in India in the week of 7 – 15 September 2009. That is next week.

Automatic vehicles are growing in popularity in India as the stigma of bad fuel efficiency figures and ‘not macho enough’ vanishes. Among SUVs, Mahindra Scorpio and the Chevrolet Captiva already offer AT versions.  The the top end of the Indian car market, automatics are selling exceedingly well, often taking up the lion’s share of the market for some luxury car models. Hyundai has launched an i10 automatic too, and increasingly automatics are accepted by the market.

Ford hopes to capitalise on this new-found acceptance of automatics by introducing an automatic version of the Endeavour. It would also help them stand out as the Toyota Fortuner does not have an automatic version yet.

It is expected that the Ford Endeavour Automatic would be priced some Rs 50,000 higher than the manual version.

It is believed that the automatic version of the Ford Endeavour would be equipped with a shift-on-the-fly Borg Warner system to shift to 4WD or back, up to a top speed of 100 kmph.

Currently, Ford Endeavour is priced at Rs 15.01 lakhs for the low end 2500cc version, with the 2500 cc 4×2 version priced at 15.89 and the top end 3000 cc Thunder version priced at 17.38 lakhs ex-showroom New Delhi.

The new Ford Endeavour AT is also expected to have some minor visual enhancements.