Top Car

January 2016|TOPCAR.CO.ZA 39

Road test: FordFigo

T’SA CLEVER

trick, re-appropriating

old hardware into

something shiny and

new. The benefits are

twofold: cu stomers get

an affordable, quality

product on an

established platform

while minimalR&D and retooling reduces

cost for the manufacturer. It’s as old a

stra tegy as it is smart. Remember the Toyota

Tazz, itself a ba rebones extended-r un Toyota

Conquest? Or much morefamously, the

Volkswagen Citi Golf – that Mzansi sp ecial

that went on tosell for well over two decades

untilsafety standards eventually killed it

off? Volkswagen didn ’t waste any time

engineering a repl acement with its locally

built Vivo, a prev ious-gener ation Polo

hopped -up on automotive botox.

Volkswagen’s dominance of the segment

continued unabated untila challenger

sprung up from an unlikely place, India –

and with a Ford ba dge on its nose. Enter the

first generation Figo then, a reskinned

previous-gen Ford Fiesta, a formula much

like that of the Vivo it challenged, but built

on the cheap in India. Gifted with th e

chuckable chassis and revvy inlin e-four of

its donor, the Figo went on tosmash our

expectations and indeed pr ovide the perfect

foil to the Vivo. Since then the Vivo has

enjoyed a fair amount of up dates and

upgrades. As for the Figo, it gets an all-new

platform. It also gets all-newmetal. It gets

Sync connectivity and a new 1.5-litr e petrol

engine. And this is it.

I