Top Car

January 2016|TOPCAR.CO.ZA 39Road test: FordFigoT’SA CLEVERtrick, re-appropriatingold hardware intosomething shiny andnew. The benefits aretwofold: cu stomers getan affordable, qualityproduct on anestablished platformwhile minimalR&D and retooling reducescost for the manufacturer. It’s as old astra tegy as it is smart. Remember the ToyotaTazz, itself a ba rebones extended-r un ToyotaConquest? Or much morefamously, theVolkswagen Citi Golf – that Mzansi sp ecialthat went on tosell for well over two decadesuntilsafety standards eventually killed itoff? Volkswagen didn ’t waste any timeengineering a repl acement with its locallybuilt Vivo, a prev ious-gener ation Polohopped -up on automotive botox.Volkswagen’s dominance of the segmentcontinued unabated untila challengersprung up from an unlikely place, India –and with a Ford ba dge on its nose. Enter thefirst generation Figo then, a reskinnedprevious-gen Ford Fiesta, a formula muchlike that of the Vivo it challenged, but builton the cheap in India. Gifted with th echuckable chassis and revvy inlin e-four ofits donor, the Figo went on tosmash ourexpectations and indeed pr ovide the perfectfoil to the Vivo. Since then the Vivo hasenjoyed a fair amount of up dates andupgrades. As for the Figo, it gets an all-newplatform. It also gets all-newmetal. It getsSync connectivity and a new 1.5-litr e petrolengine. And this is it.I