Indian Autos blog

IAB fan Akhil Gopal just returned from the dealer preview showcasing select customers the new Fiesta that launches on the 14th. Akhil has been following us on twitter (you can follow IAB @indianautos) where he regularly tweets and reacts to our stories. Akhil puts down his first hand experience of seeing and experiencing Ford’s B+ segment challenger.

take it away Akhil..

I’m Akhil Gopal (@akhilgopalg). These are a couple of snaps I took of the car that needs no introduction to IABians. The Fiesta does not miss out on the glam while traveling from a computer screen to real life. I’m seeing it for the first time and it is exactly the way I thought it would look.

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Starting today at 6PM, Goody Two Shoes has been incredibly lucky in having extra pairs of shoes to help us march towards July’s good deed.

‘Down to earth’, a store based in Auroville (Pondicherry) a platform for young designers, will host a small exhibition cum sale in Chennai to showcase their talent as well as lend a helping hand to Goody Two Shoes.

Items on display will be Cushions, Table runners, Votive candles, Earthenware, oil on canvas pop art paintings by French artists, Funky pot holders and Stationery holders made from recycled tin mugs, mini barbeque sets, etc.

15% of the profit from every product sold will go towards Goody two Shoes Inc’s July initiative which is striving to provide a week’s supply of a nourishing packet of milk and tender coconut water for every patient undergoing chemotherapy at the Cancer Research Institute, Chennai.

Please drop in to encourage the designers and artisans who have come together to create this charity event that will put a smile on children and adults affected by cancer. By purchasing the products on sale you would be contributing to a noble cause and walking away with exclusive pieces of eco-friendly art at the same time.

Also available are home made cakes, cookies and other goodies, at ‘down to earth’ prices.

Looking forward to seeing you there,
Anu & Sunanda,
Co-founders,
Goody Two Shoes Inc

Venue : studio DCode
Timings – 12PM – 8PM
New no. 16, Old no.21,
Cenotaph 1st street,
Alwarpet, Chennai -18
(Nr. Japanese Embassy)

Contact numbers – Harini – 99620 25122 / Anupama – 99410 71874

For IAB readers – I will be working out of studio DCode all week long. I will be happy to sit with you over a hot cuppa and discuss what we share in common – love for automobiles. Will I see you there tomorrow?

Thank you,
Shrawan Raja

click Continue to see some example products on sale

Has Tata Motors finalized Pretoria to host its assembly line?

According to a recent AFP report Tata Motors is all set to begin building an assembly plant in Pretoria, South Africa. The lines could roll out commercial vehicles as well as passenger cars. Tata commenced exports of Nano a few weeks ago and could turn to emerging markets in Africa to clock more volumes. Once construction begins, one doesn’t have to wait for very long before the roll out of the first product. The first bricks of the assembly line could be placed on the 22 July.

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As car sales start to decline, car makers get increasingly aggressive in their marketing campaigns to woo the audience. Latest rounds include giving away a free car to a lucky winner.

One of the biggest fast food companies (in the world) and the country’s largest automaker have tied up together for one such giveaway. McDonalds and Maruti Suzuki present to you an exciting opportunity to eat your burger and drive away a brand new car.

Don’t get too excited because you are not driving away the new Swift or SX4. What you get is the big brother of the Wagon R – Maruti Eeco.

The offer is called ‘Maruti Suzuki EECO Happy Family Meal Contest’ (too long eh?) and the deal is that you buy a Family meal and/or Happy Meal and/or a Extra Value Meal and/or Breakfast Meal between 1st July to 30th July, 2011 and you are eligible for the lucky draw with the Eeco as the grand prize.

If you are a happy meal addict, you’ll anyway need the extra space of a big car soon.

A similar (and a less desirable) draw was announced by the Rajasthan government last week with a Tata Nano as the grand prize for those who opted to get neutered.

In a world where a lot of SUVs are dropping the quintessential boxy design of an SUV and adopting a sloping – almost coupeish profile, there is one car maker you can trust on to make big boxy SUVs forever – Land Rover. The Freelander, Discovery and even the Range Rover, as cool as they are, can hardly be called ‘aerodynamic’.

So it comes as no surprise that the 2013 Range Rover caught testing by MotorAuthority is quite a boxy design. The new SUV (Codenamed L405) is expected to be based on a lightweight rivet-bonded aluminum chassis inspired by the current Jaguar XJ. The engineers have managed to knock of roughly 660 to 880 pounds by using lightweight materials. All of this weight saving will translate into high fuel economy figures.

The new Range Rover has a slightly longer wheelbase and a considerably lower roofline to make it more aerodynamic. The longer wheelbase should translate in better legroom. However, the power trains will be more or less similar to the outgoing model.

You can expect a naturally-aspirated and supercharged 5.0-liter V8s, as well as a pair of new turbodiesel units with power ranging from 260 to 510 horsepower. Tata Motors (the new owners of Jaguar-Land Rover) also want a diesel-electric hybrid engine for the new SUV to deliver 14 kmpl (that is astonishing for such a huge car)

Expected to go on sale in 2013, we can expect an India launch soon after the global one.

Volkswagen today rolled out the 100,000th car from its Chakan plant in Pune. Production started in May 2009 with the Skoda Fabia followed by the Polo, Vento and the Fabia facelift. Next year a car smaller than Polo alongside the Skoda Rapid are likely to be made in Chakan.

Skoda and VW brand models are manufactured at Chakan. Assembly of Jetta, Laura, Passat, Superb and Yeti take place at another VW Group plant in Aurangabad.

The Chakan plant can manufacture 130,000 cars in a year at full capacity and it was constructed in just 17 months (private residences have taken longer to come up) with an investment commitment of 3,800 crore rupees. The investment is the largest to date by a German company in India.

IAB visited the squeaky-clean VW plant in August 2010 and met with German officials who said a small R&D team was working on improving every aspect of the Indian Polo.

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At IAB, we think that the Audi A4 is one of the coolest looking car money can buy. One in black with 3.0L TDI engine just melts your heart like a vanilla ice cream on a sunny day.

Its contemporary styling and crisp LED cluster make it the car Iron man would drive if he was an accountant.

But the current A4 has been with us for 4 years and the styling is getting old (just a bit). Considering the new Mercedes C Class has been already unveiled to the world and the next generation BMW 3 Series is just around the corner, Audi cannot just sit there and do nothing.

So they have decided to give the Audi A4 a mid life facelift to make its styling more in line with its elder sisters A6 and A8. Here we have a station wagon version of the A4 doing its testing rounds. Although, Audi India doesn’t sell the wagon version, the styling cues are more or less similar.

From the looks of it, the new A4 is going to have sharp bonnet lines like the new A6 and a refreshed front grill. The rear LED cluster will be replaced by a completely new one. On the inside, Audi plans to provide latest MMI controls along with a lot of features that will trickle down from the A6.

By our guessing, this will hit the market exactly after BMW chooses to display its new 3 Series. So expect an Auto Expo 2012 debut for the new A4.

Facebook group Auto Adrenaline is carrying images of the Tata Aria 4×2 Pride since yesterday. The image shows the entry point in the Aria range without the 4×4 badge.

IAB has already informed readers that the 4X2 will not have any severe de-contenting. Tata would just introduce the 4X2 variant, ready since the late last year, on a similarly spec-ed car.

According to the Facebook group and information circulating on the web, the Pleasure variant with 16 inch steel wheels and basic equipment will be sole 2WD.

As we pointed out in the previous post, Tata Motors isn’t interested in selling the Aria at the moment lacking equipment such as airbags, steering-mounted audio controls, available even on the Pleasure variant. The two higher variants are Prestige and Pride and they are feature-packed with climate control, rain sensing wipers, chilled glovebox and 17 inch wheels.

Sources say that that price difference between the 4X2 and 4X4 Pleasure version will not be higher than 60k rupees.