Indian Autos blog

We brought you the first spy shots of the next gen Audi A6 and now we bring you some more pictures of the same. What is clearly evident from the spy shots is the lengthened wheelbase of the car. The trademark Audi LED’s at the front and the rear remain and so does the coupe like silhouette.

The 2012 A6 is based on the new Audi MLB Platform and will come in both 2 wheel drive and Quattro options. It will come with a wide range of engines including a 3.0 V6 TDI, 3.0 Supercharged V6 and a 4.0 liter V8. Power outputs for these engines will range from 300 BHP to a whopping 550 BHP. Their will be more fuel efficient variants in the form of a TSI motor pumping out 200 odd BHP. The car will come with a dual clutch 7 speed S-Tronic gearbox. The 2012 A6 uses oodles of aluminum in its body to keep the weight in check.

The new A6 is expected to hit the Indian Market not before the 1st half of 2012 shortly after it makes its international debut in late 2011. Audi sells the A6 in minuscule numbers in our country thanks to the new 5 from BMW and the new E from Mercedes both of which are doing exceptionally well.

We told you earlier that Audi will be going aggressive in India starting 2011 as it wants to be numero uno in India in the coming years. The 2012 A6 will be a very important car for Audi and should do well for the company.

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One of our readers from Thailand Vu Hung, sent us interior shots of the Nissan V-Platform sedan which will be named Sunny overseas. In India, the V-Platform sedan should have different branding. It will be available with a 1.6-liter petrol engine and a 1.5-liter diesel when it’s launched in the last quarter of 2011. Automatic transmission will also be offered at some stage, we’re told.

The V-Platform sedan will hardly bear any similarities to the Micra to the naked eye. Under the sheet metal, much of the components will be carried over. The interiors are also marginally similar. Aircon controls have been lifted from the Micra and so have the door levers. The Start-stop button will feature on the sedan too but the rest is all different.

There’s a sophisticated CD player on the sedan and the air con vents are square, compared to the circular ones on the hatchback. The front seats and mirrors are drawn from the hatch, while the door handles, coming off the Micra, will have a line of chrome on them.

We’re constantly trying to hatch the V-Platform sedan for you with renderings, spyshots and inside information. We’ll get you more over the next few days, so stay tuned.

With a growing customer base and increase in our product portfolio we need to access more and more customers and to achieve this we set up an aggressive program to increase our sales and service network. We will continue with this expansion plan to reach out to new markets catering to the ever increasing demand for our products

Hyundai boss HW Park remarks during the inauguration of the 300th dealership in India. The company is resolute with its network plan as it eyes 610 sales outlets and 625 workshops by Dec 2010. Remember, the high-volume Hyundai HA (800cc small car) is only about a year away?

The Italians have a natural knack for fashion. The mantra is that looking great is more important than looking where you are going. It is a country where even the police uniforms are designed by Armani. Unfortunately, it all went horribly wrong when Italian Design house, Fiorucci decided that it wants to make a bold statement with a few unsold Hyundai i10s.

This isn’t a special edition, if you were wondering. What this is actually is a stock clearance of the pre-facelift model using painted interiors. Since the new model arrived sooner than they predicted, the yard has to be cleared away for fresh stock and in a hurry, the Hyundai i10 special edition was born.

The above paragraph is just our imagination.

What they did was take a standard i10 and then color the seats, dashboard trimming, door panels, custom gearshift knob, floor mats, mirror caps, front grille etc. in what they call Unique (read lime green and pink) colors. And you can buy this special edition in 5 different colors: Oyster Gray, Deep Ocean Blue, Sleek Silver, Crystal White or Stone Black. The good thing is that they haven’t done it the Indian way, which is to slap some stickers on the car and call it Limited Edition.

The actual useful changes are an electrically operated soft top and a rear camera with 4 inch monitor set up for easy parking. All this can be yours for just €10,990.

Let’s hope Hyundai doesn’t do any such marketing gimmicks in the Indian Market. The new i10 is a solid replacement and trying to revive the old one even for a special edition is not recommended.

I don’t want to see a i10 Manish Malhotra edition, Hyundai. Spare us.

Nissan earlier this month released the teaser sketches of its V-Platform Sedan (code name L02B). So we planned to touch it up a little and take it to a more production ready state. Although the authenticity of the final outcome is unknown, by the looks of things, the sedan looks completely different from the hatch.

Nissan insists that the new sedan only shares the V-Platform and nothing else with the hatch. The pic shows that the car has a very aggressive front end with a bit of 370z like touch to the headlamps. As we wrote earlier, this one’s looking like a mini Teana.

If all goes well, we could see a potent competitor for the existing Dzire’s, Manza’s and Accents’s from Nissan’s stable. Nissan could stretch out the variants (fully-loaded diesel model with automatic transmission?) to enter the Honda City territory.

Bits and pieces hidden away under the skin will come from the Micra that could translate into a competitive price tag. The car will use a 1.5 liter diesel engine (same as the Logan, to be plonked in the Micra too) & a 1.6 liter petrol is also on the cards. Nissan could also offer a CVT transmission on it at a later stage.

Nissan will badge the imported model as Sunny and the name is not likely to be used on the Indian model.

The utility vehicle segment has shown a growth grown 21% in the first two quarter of this fiscal. Betting big on the utility market, Tata Motors is all set to launch 3 new cars by next year.

The company is in the process of developing a premium SUV based on the Aria’s X2 platform which will be launched in the future.

Tata motors also plans to launch the much awaited new Safari by early next year. On the condition of anonymity, a technical staff from Tata Motors noted -

We will be launching the new version of Safari in January next year.

But the most immediate launch will be an eight-seater van based on the Tata Ace platform (Tata Venture) which will be launched next month in Rajasthan. This will complete against Maruti’s offering, the EECO.

The company is also considering the viability of exporting Tata Aria to European and SAARC countries.

Read about the new Safari if you haven’t yet done so.

If you have grown up in India in the 80’s or 90’s, (and it really doesn’t matter what sex, income group, location etc. you belong to) you will have your very own memory of the mighty Ambassador. Touted as the Sarkari Babu’s Car, the Amby is one of the greatest icons that have lived in the Indian Auto market.

For our international audiences who don’t know what I am all about; Launched in the 1950s, the Hindustan Motors Ambassador was actually a re-badged Morris Oxford III that took off in India because of astonishingly comfortable ride even on harsh Indian roads.

If the Maruti 800 is considered as the People’s Car of Indian, the Amby was a Statesman’s car. Most of them had a small label saying ‘The Govt of India’ and a tiny siren on the top and were followed by a fleet of policemen on bullets. It is very difficult not to get misty-eyed when you speak of one.

Sure, they were attempts made to bring this icon back from the dead. In 2004, they launched the HM Avigo which was just a face lifted version of the Ambassador. But all these efforts were half hearted and the whole set up ended up as a complete failure.

But last night while surfing of Facebook, I found a tiny ad on the left hand side that said Amby – Come Back. Much to my delight, the Amby was right there.

So apparently the company has opened a facebook account and is collecting a lot of market feedback for a complete overhaul of the Amby in 2011. The company president Mr C. K. Birla did make a lot of promises last month about the new car. He said,

The new Amby will have a retro design and sport cutting-edge engineering to compete on comfort and value for money. Overseas experts have been roped in for the metamorphosis. The new version will be ready by January-February 2011 for test trials and is expected to undergo validation by May so that commercial production can begin next July

We do wish the entire team all the luck in the world!

What are you waiting for? Head over and have a look yourself: http://www.facebook.com/ambycomeback

Our very own Mahindra-Renault Logan has achieved and important milestone in the European region. The Dacia brand owned by Renault, has just celebrated the significant milestone of 1 million units produced in the plant in Romania. The 1 millionth vehicle was entry level model, white in color and fitted with engines of 75 hp 1.2L engine.

Back home achieving this target this seems like a distant dream with sales of the car not looking very promising and Renault deciding to split away from Mahindra. This entry level sedan wasn’t very well received in the market and was bought primarily by the tourism sector and the taxi market. Honestly, this car has a great chance in India if Mahindra can sell it like how it sells the Scorpio.

Having said that, Renault is still bullish on the Indian market and has promised Fluence and Koleos under its own dealership network from 2011.