russellw

For all that anyone could care - here are a few snippets from the Ford pre release info.

The car is being positioned against the Barina, Jazz, Echo and Mazda 2 in what they describe as the core market represented by trusted local brands.

The segment represents 69,000 sales per annum of which 57% (39,000) are from the core sub segment.

Barina holds around 7%, Jazz 12%, Mazda 2 6% (climbing) and the Echo 22% of the total segment.

There will be an LX in 3 or 5 door, a Zetec in 3 door only and a Ghia in 5 door only.

Engine for all models is a 74 kW / 146 Nm 1.6 Duratec 16V.

Target sales are 600 per month after a warm up period. This would result in roughly 10 % of the segment and 18.5 % of the sub segment.

Model mix is a typical mish mash of guesses as follows:

LX 3 Door - 42% (64 % manuals)
LX 5 Door - 21% (66 % manuals)
Zetec 3 Door - 28% (82 % manuals)
Ghia 5 Door - 9% (45 % manuals)

Buyer mix - Private 70 %, Business 25 %, Govt 4 %, Rental 1%.

Will do a quick comparison with the competition later but pricing estimates which put the base model at mid 16k won't help.

cheers
Russ