The 2011 Ford Ranger’s dashboard will have good fit, finish and car-like attributes
The Ford Ranger, a highly successful pickup truck in Australia shares vital components with the Endeavour SUV sold here in India. A quick google image search proves previous versions of the Ranger have huge influence on the Endeavour’s dashboard.
We feel it is safe to assume the next generation Ford Endeavour will have the similar dashboard layout as the future Ranger, which debuts next year and will sell internationally.
Codenamed the T6, the upcoming Ranger’s dashboard has a hint of Fiesta (European Fiesta) in it. The steering wheel is straight out of the Fiesta while items like LCD screen, steering mounted controls keep it close to that of a car. The T6 according to our friends in Car Advice will have interiors with fit and finish similar to a Ford car.
We have absolutely no information whatsoever on the future Endeavour. In India, Forf is looking at introducing a couple of new Endeavour variants and the current model will run for quite sometime.
Tata Nano isn’t going to celebrate its first birthday
This certainly isn’t the way Tata would have liked to celebrate the first birthday of the Nano.
The company is now in the process of investigating the possible causes behind the Tata Nano which went up in flames yesterday in Mumbai, minutes after it was delivered to its customer in Prabhadevi, Mumbai.
Spokesperson for Tata Motors -
This is a unique case. We are trying to figure out what went wrong.
Over the last one year three other cases of Nanos going up in flames have been reported. All the three cars were parked when the incident happened.
Tata Motors announced the problems with the static cars catching fire were due to a faulty switch placed near the steering wheel. The company stopped sourcing that faulty component from the vendor and performed checks to vehicles on the road.
Tata Motors has offered to return the money to Mr Satish Sawant, the insurance agent who cheated death yesterday when the car he was driven in by the company driver suddenly burst into flames, barely 45 mins into the drive.
The exact cause of the fire is still being investigated and it remains to be seen if Tata will deploy one more round of checks before cars are delivered to customers.
We believe the agreement will be building a smaller Logan shown above at Nashik
French automaker Renault is close to an agreement with Indian utility vehicle maker Mahindra to refurbish the rapidly vanishing Logan in India.
Ashish Sinharoy, a Mumbai-based spokesman for Renault -
We’ve reached agreement on almost every critical element of the negotiation. The conclusion of the talks will be announced by mid-April.
What Mr.Sinharoy is referring to when saying “agreement” could be manufacturing a re-bodied Logan at the Nashik facility of Mahindra. The car was spied yesterday in India, built using almost the same components with a compressed boot.
The Renault Logan is over 4 meters in length and shortening it by 25cm will qualify it for a lower excise duty slab resulting in a cheaper price tag for the end user. Sinharoy agrees Renault is skeptical of re-engineering the car for a single country.
Mahindra Renault’ Logan competes with the likes of the Swift Dzire, Tata Indigo, Ford Ikon, etc. Despite being in a high demand segment, it recorded a loss of $108 million last year with sales down by almost 48 percent compared to the same time last year.
It will be an electric version of our small car Spark and will be the first four-door passenger car in the world in this segment. The acquisition price may be slightly higher. But the operating costs will be very low.
- GM India’s Marketing Director Gaurav Gupta on the E-Spark scheduled for a late-2010 release
The Opel Agila is a rebadged Suzuki Splash produced at Suzuki’s Hungary plant
Autoweek NL is reporting the next generation Suzuki Splash/Ritz will replace the current model in the year 2012.
The Suzuki Splash uses the Swift’s platform. In India, both the cars use the same powertrain and are priced inches away from each other. The Splash has more cabin volume and a very different design compared to the Swift.
Autoweek also reports Opel will not collaborate with Suzuki for the next generation Agila. Opel sells the Splash as the Agila with its badges in many parts of Europe. This move comes after Suzuki went into a partnership with Volkswagen AG last year.
At present, Suzuki manufactures both Agila and Splash in its Hungarian plant. The production of the Agila should continue till the end of 2012. It is not clear if Opel will develop the next generation Splash in-house or collaborate with another brand.
A 800cc Toyota tall boy built to take on the Tata Nano? Is this possible?
A Japanese magazine has published an artist’s image of what possibly could be Toyota’s answer to costlier variants of the Tata Nano. The car apparently is due in 2012 and will get a 800 CC engine.
Toyota could place this new car under the Etios. Maybe Toyota is gunning for a 2.5 lakh rupee price tag with this tall boy.
At first, we thought of passing this highly speculative story until we read concrete details like layout, engine displacement, dimensions and weight. And we were able to dig up a quote of a senior Toyota official from last year’s list of posts.
Dato Akira Okabe, senior managing director and member of the Toyota Motor Corporation board -
We may look at launching more than one compact car model for the (Indian) domestic market. Our current market share in passenger vehicles is 3 per cent. In the next four years, we hope to sell three times our current volumes. And by 2015, our rate of growth will be in double digits.
The magazine reports the new compact will head to India in 2012. It will have a 2-cylinder 800cc engine that will be placed over the rear axle. The dimensions of this car are 3150*1535*1600 (L*W*H)
The weight of the car (we assume kerb weight) will be around 600kg and the fuel efficiency is listed at 30 kmpl!
Is this too good to be true? Can Toyota manufacture a car for 2.5 lakh rupees meeting Toyota’s global quality standards?
The short-boot Logan isn’t looking very good. Maybe the lamps need tweaking
Thanks to Business Motoring, we have here the first visuals of the shortened Renault Logan that will be introduced in India very shortly. This picture confirms Renault will continue its partnership with Mahindra for selling the Logan in India.
The shortened boot makes the Logan look more like a notchback and gives it common characteristics to the Tata Indigo CS. The shortened boot helps bring the car to under four metres in overall length and that means the Logan is classified as a small car, which allows it to be categorized as a small car. This means it has to pay only a 10 percent excise duty, 8 less than what it pays in its current avatar.
Thanks to the smaller dimension, the Logan will be Rs 30,000-50,000 less than the existing model.
But this is only applicable to the diesel model as the petrol engine fails to meet the displacement requirement.
If Mahindra has to benefit fully from the excise benefit, it needs to get in a petrol engine that’s smaller than 1.2-liters. Could they use the Nissan Micra‘s engine which produces 79bhp?
Maybe Mahindra would not offer the petrol engine in the first place.
Codenamed ‘YR9′ the new generation Maruti Suzuki Wagon R might well use the K-Series engine found on other cars in its line-up like the A-Star and Ritz.
The new Wagon R could use a lower displacement engine. Currently the Wagon R runs using a 1061cc 4-cylinder MPFI engine that generated 64bhp of power. The only lower displacement engine we know of in the K-Series range is the 1.0-liter engine found on the A-Star which only has 3 cylinders.
Reports in the media suggest the new Wagon R will come at a “substantial” premium over the currently running model. In Mumbai, ex-showroom prices of the current WagonR are between Rs 3.33 lakh and Rs 4.55 lakh.
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