Reports on the blogosphere specify a festival season launch for the Chevrolet Captiva facelift. The new Captiva has not escaped our eye right from the days when test mules of both Chevrolet and the Holden/Opel counterpart were testing.
The first mules were caught in the fag end of 2009 when news emerged that a new, high displacement engine was also on board clocking test miles. When we asked GM India’s President and Managing Director Mr Karl Slym back in January last year about the refreshed Captiva’s potentiality in India, he murmured candidly “you know too much about my cars.”
Back on June 24, 2010, we wrote an article titled Spied – Chevrolet Captiva facelift; coming Diwali 2011? We had sensed back then that the facelift would not be launched anytime soon. There’s no heaven and hell difference between the replacement model and the current Captiva.
Fiat is working on reviving the Panda and in the next few months it’ll be out on some international markets. There’s huge demand for the Panda in Europe and Fiat manufactured the 1,500,000th Panda back in July 2009. It has been in production since 1980 and we can’t wait for it here in India with the 900cc TwinAir petrol and 1.3-liter Multijet engine.
Porsche meanwhile is downsizing some of its cars starting with the Cayenne. The Cayenne Junior or Cajun will touch down in mid 2013. Based on the Audi Q5, the Cajun is a perfect car for Porsche to run down the likes of the BMW X3 and Volvo XC60. But will the Cajun be an overpriced product due to the anti-import duty structure?
Dacia is working on a Mahindra Xylo in Romania. Codenamed J92, the Dacia Monospace MPV could bear the Popster nameplate when it comes out next year. Like other Dacias (Logan, Sandero and Duster) its should be great value and can help Renault occupy the MPV space in India that will see so many new players over the next 12-18 months.
Sources have told IndianAutosBlog.com that Mercedes Benz has pushed back the launch of the new C-Class to late Q3/early Q4. Earlier it was believed that the new C-Class will arrive in Q3. Compared to the first half of 2010, sales performance of the C-Class has shown considerable improvement.
In the period of January-June 2011, the C-Class became MB India’s flagship car by registering a 88% growth by reaching 1,746 customers compared to 928 units last year.
According to Mercedes Benz the new C-Class has about 2,000 new components compared to the outgoing car. The front-end has been completely revised, even having a light-weight aluminium hood. The rear bumper and one-piece jewel case type tail light are new. The dashboard has been redesigned with new materials and a host of new safety systems have been included including Attention Assist, Adaptive Highbeam Assist, Park Assist incl. PARKTRONIC, Lane Keeping Assist and Blind Spot Assist.
Sources tell IndianAutosBlog.com General Motors is in position to uncork the Beat diesel. Last month GM India told IAB that Beat diesel will launch in late July. Our sources tell us by mid July, the launch will be over and done with. Chevrolet dealers will receive one of the world’s smallest diesel engined cars in end July.
Prices will be 10-15% over the Beat petrol. Last month Siddharth Vinayak Patankar (SVP) of NDTV Car and Bike Show reviewed the Beat diesel. He informed viewers that variants and equipment are left undisturbed and fuel economy of the Beat diesel has reached 24kmpl.
Powered by a 936cc 3cyl diesel engine producing 57bhp/150Nm, it is paired to a new 5-speed gearbox. SVP said the turbo lag is reduced due to a smaller size of turbo and the cabin is silent during operation. The steering system has shifted from hydraulic to EPS in the view to maximize fuel economy.
The BMW X1 opened up a whole new segment in India and is close to becoming the third best selling SUV. We test drove the BMW X1 last week and we thought that it was the perfect entry level BMW in India.
The segment realizes suddenly there’s so much attention that it can hardly see the Q3 and new Koleos coming. Mercedes, on the other hand, is taking things a bit slowly. They are still working on their rival – the Mercedes GLC or BLK.
CarandDriver has presented its fans with what we think is the closest resembling rendering of Mercedes’s X1 rival. The little coupe-crossover is based on the new B Series platform. Unlike the GLK, the GLC will have softer styling cues to make it look like an urban run-around rather than a dust-eating off roader.
India is the second largest country in the world when it comes to population. 1.2 billion people call India their home. 17% of the world’s population lives on 2.3% of the world’s land.
The ever increasing population has certainly put tremendous pressure on our resources. The cities are flooded with people trying to make a descent living. Clearly, family planning is the crux of the hour.
The Rajasthan Government has devised a clever plan to encourage family planning initiative. Get neutered and drive away a Nano!
Yes, you heard it correct. The medical and health department of Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu state is offering a Tata Nano as a lucky draw for people who get themselves sterilized. Provisional census 2011 shows an 11.8% population growth in Jhunjhunu in ten years. This is exactly 10 times the average growth rate of India. Clearly, actions need to be taken and they need to be taken now!
The ‘Big Car Churning’ machine has finally hit the brakes. Maruti Suzuki, after 2 years of dominating growth, has experienced a decline in sales because of labor strike that hit the company in June. Maruti last showed a drop in sales in December 2008.
The ‘Small Car’ czar had to stop production for 11 days as 2,000 workers at the Manesar went on strike because their demands of recognizing them as a new union was not met. Maruti Suzuki suffered a loss of 93 million dollars and 12,500 units of different models were not produced at all.
Initially, when the strike began, the company said that it had enough inventories to factor in the strike but later Maruti Suzuki chairman RC Bhargava announced that there will be ‘a considerable delay’ on all the diesel models. The launch of the new Swift was also delayed because of the same strike.
Adding to the misery, the company had to shut its plant for the next 6 days for annual maintenance of the machinery. That’s a total of 16 days of no production at all!
Further, the passenger car segment also showed signs of a slowdown with only 17% growth as opposed to 31% last year in the same period. So a ‘triple shock’ meant even the biggest automaker had to drop its weapons. Although, this decline will be temporary one as production has resumed in full swing. Maruti will bring the new Swift, new Dzire and R3 MPV to the market next.
Victor Uribe’s work has been a regular feature on our international blog steeringnews.com. He makes his first appearance on Indian Autos Blog with the Santro (Atos in Europe) revival.
There may not be any mention of it, but Uribe has based his design on a concept Hyundai showed at Frankfurt in 2009.
If you remember the ix-metro concept, Uribe’s Atos will be familiar to you. The Atos laid the foundation for Hyundai to bring cars like the i10 and i20. The Santro continues selling in India, the going for the last 14 years has been silky smooth. Last month Hyundai shifted 6,675 units of this outdated car into the market, a far better performance than Tata Nano costing almost half as much.
Let us go back to the future. Another thematic inspiration for the futuristic Atos is the Peugeot BB1 that blended the safety of a car and maneuverability of a motorcycle. Urbe’s achieved dynamic tension by mixing faceted surfaces and triangulating lines.
The detailing of Victor’s Atos is too difficult for dies and tools to mass produce so this will continue living in Uribe’s archive for a while. Uribe says the Atos revival needs to scale up the market and be appointed as the Toyota iQ and Fiat 500 killer. Hyundai isn’t as ambitious as Victor.
We hear Hyundai is planning two small cars, the 800cc HA hitting showrooms floors in less than six months and BA, the next generation i10 expected with a diesel engine in 2013.
