A Day with Ford Figo Discover Smart drive team in Bangalore

-2020 update: Had to remove photos due to technical issue (site where I had uploaded them went down)- will try to restore -

I made another brief visit to Bangalore this Thursday (4th Bangalore visit this October), to be a part of Ford India’s celebration of manufacturing 50000 figos (Ford’s recently introduced small car has been a great success in India, climbing-up to 5th spot in terms of most sold small cars). To celebrate this success Figo has been doing a month long road trip called Discover Smart Drive, which started from Chandigarh earlier this month.

The convoy was in Bangalore 2 days back (as I write this the convoy must be on its way to Chennai, where the grand finale is scheduled) and I got to join the team, along with a few Ford officials from Chennai who were driving to Blr.

Met the team at Hotel Monarch, Brigade road on Thursday night and we called it a day.

Friday morning we left to RVCE on Mysore road, where Ford was scheduled to conduct its CSR initiative, DSFL (Driving Skills for Life) wherein several vital tips and tricks regarding safe, economic and sensible driving were shared. Ford is taking this initiative seriously and has conducted over 50 sessions so far, training traffic police, drivers, college students and so on and plans take it in large scale in future. The session focused on several aspects of driving (pre-driving checks, safety measures, response time, increasing fuel efficiency and so on) which we often tend to miss. More details on this in a separate post soon.

Post event we had nice lunch in RVCE 1st year mess, followed by a quick demo on safe braking distance. I had a quick interaction with the 4th Ford Figo couple (who were chosen to drive the 50000th Figo in its last leg of Discover Smart Drive, from Hyderabad till Chennai) and also got to drive the 50000th Figo a bit. We drove on top of AnandRao circle flyover overlooking turf club, and drove near Vidhana Soudha and Kubban Park (media was crowded outside high court in anticipation of results of 11 BJP rebel MLA disqualification case)


Below is a video made by Hrish Thota and team about the Bangalore visit. My brief interview with the lucky couple is also included

Subsequently we’d to return to Chennai while the team proceeded with their other activities like tweet-up and so on. Got to meet Hrish Thota aka Dhempe (the official blogger) and his team (which specializes in short videos), officials from Shobiz (few with whom I’d worked during Nano Superdrive). Hrish has been documenting the discover Smart drive from the beginning and also making interesting videos of the trip. 

Discover Smart Drive is scheduled to conclude in Chennai next week.
Similar posts: Interesting facts related to Ford India * Ford Figo Review *