Ford Freestyle to be launched April 26: All we know so far

Ford India has finally announced the launch date of its much-awaited compact utility vehicle (CUV), the Freestyle. The new Ford Freestyle will go on sale in India April 26. The Figo-based crossover was earlier rumored to be launched April 18.

The bookings for the new Ford Freestyle are currently underway across the dealerships of the company and the model was also spotted at some of the dealership yards of the company. Ford India had opened bookings online for the first 100 customers via e-commerce website Amazon India from April 14.

The Freestyle is the rugged version of the Figo hatchback, which sports black honeycomb grille, faux silver skid plates, beefy front and rear bumpers with black body cladding. The Freestyle comes with 15mm extra ground clearance and sporty suspension set up over the regular Figo variant.

Under the hood, the Ford Freestyle will be powered by a new 1.2-liter Ti-VCT petrol engine tuned to churn out 95 bhp of power and 120 Nm of torque. The diesel mill, on the other hand, will be tried-and-tested 1.5-liter unit producing 99 bhp and 215 Nm of peak torque. Both engines will come mated to five-speed manual transmission. Ford claims the Freestyle petrol variants will return 19.0 kmpl fuel efficiency while the diesel variants will come with 24.4 kmpl mileage.

The Freestyle will be offered in four variants – Ambiente, Trend, Titanium, and Titanium+ and six color options – Canyon Ridge, Absolute Black, Moondust Silver, Oxford White, White Gold and Smoke Grey.

On the feature front, the new Ford CUV will get a 6.5-inch touchscreen at the top center of the dashboard which is compatible with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. All-new Freestyle will also flaunt push-button-start, Ford MyKey technology, automatic climate control, rearview camera, automatic headlamp, rain sensing wipers and others. The safety in the Freestyle will be taken care of by 6 airbags, ABS with EBD, HLA, and ESP and other measures depending upon the variant. It will also get Active Rollover Prevention as standard.