Some weeks back, we shared with you a spy picture of a small Maruti Suzuki car spotted testing which looked like a fusion of Maruti Alto and Maruti 800 in terms of design. Well this time, we bring you an official news. Maruti Suzuki India’s managing executive officer (engineering) IV Rao has stated that Maruti Suzuki is aggressively working on an all-new small car. The car will be a segment below the Maruti Alto which brings it closer to the Tata Nano’s territory. In his official statement to media, he stated, this will be an all-new car, though based on an existing platform. The idea is to do it in-house at Maruti, with minimal support from our Japanese parent, Suzuki. The idea behind bringing is to constantly introduce new models while also developing the company’s R&D capability to develop, design and engineer a model on its own. It will be no less than a milestone for us.
The Maruti Alto, which is the top selling car in India, is at present the best and most affordable small car from Maruti except for Maruti 800 which is phased out from 13 cities of India because of implementation of BS4 emission norms. With the new small car or we should say, a new model of Maruti 800 replacement, the segment which is yet untapped by Maruti will be opened to it. Maruti 800 CC car will compete head on with Hyundai 800, Chevrolet Spark 800 which is yet awaited and also to some extent eat up some sales of the high end variants of Tata Nano. It will be interesting to see how the developments take place. IV Rao did not disclose any timeline, but we expect that the car will be showcased at the Auto Expo 2012 in January 2012 and will be subsequently launched in India.
No comments:
Post a Comment