Indian Autos blog

Will a mini SUV get Mahindra and Tata interested to develop their own?

Premier Auto Limited (PAL) is attempting to get back in the game. Those of you who don’t remember this name, Premier Auto Limited (PAL) is the company which gave us the Premier Padmini a few years ago.

The Company plans to make a come back after 9 years with an interesting idea — to produce the Cheapest SUV in India till date.

This is set to be another ‘cheapest’ after the Tata Nano.

A Chinese four-wheeler company Zotye Auto will join hands with PAL in this new project. It is for the first time a Chinese automobile maker has tied up with an Indian company to produce a passenger car.

Zotye Auto is not a well known name. Zotye Auto will supply vehicle kits from China to Premier to be assembled at the Pune facility which has a peak annual capacity of 20,000 units.

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The U.K version shown here has alloy wheels and fog lamps

Buoyed by the success of the hatchback in Britain, Honda has started producing Jazz in Swindon, UK. This means, there is no more ‘Made in Japan’ Honda Jazz for UK and European customers.

Till this point, all European nations sold cars built in Japan. With rapidly falling sales in India, Europe could consider sourcing Jazz from the Indian stockyard.

Honda plans to build around 20,000 Honda Jazz units by March 2010 at the Swindon plant and also the plant will be responsible for the production of the top spec CR-V and Civic.

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Study – Thumbs down for the overpriced, underpowered Jazz

Yes, that is right. After all the drama and countless inquiries, sales of the Honda Jazz resembles the opening of a pepsi cola bottle. Experts believe that despite its costly platform, roomy interiors and Honda badge slapped inside and out, it is unable to give competition to other cheaper alternatives, ie- can’t hold a candle to Hyundai, Maruti, Tata etc.

According to officials, there were almost 50,000 inquiries for the Honda Jazz but only 4,000 of them were converted into sales. The Indian customer has intelligently moved to the City as it offers a boot, a more powerful engine and costs slightly more.

So was the Honda Jazz brought in to be a mere bait? If the ill-treated Jazz had feelings, it would cry.

The other important point to notice is the saloon vs the hatchback phenomena – people see more value in Honda City and don’t mind shelling out a few extra bucks for it.

The actual figures are like in June above 2,000 units were sold, 1,037 in July, 1,029 in August and just 504 units in September.

So 100 in October?

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The entry-level Suzuki motorcycle would be the third of its kind in the Indian market, at the affordable price bracket after the Zeus and Heat.

Apart from this development, Suzuki also has plans of launching another gearless scooter in 2011.

Atul Gupta, vice-president-sales and marketing -

Suzuki Motorcycle is also undergoing a feasibility study to launch its second gearless scooter in 2011. Our strategy is to have a ‘value for money’ bike in the Rs 40,000 segment, introduce at least one more motorcycle above 150cc and launch another superbike. Two of these three launches should happen next fiscal

Currently Suzuki motorcycles have five models in the market, a gearless scooter Access 125, two motorcycles Zeus 125cc and GS150R and two superbikes — 1300cc Hayabusa and the 1700cc Intruder.

This segment of ‘value for money’ motorcycle Mr.Gupta’s speaking about is dominated by Hero Honda. Suzuki attempts to steal some of their market share and that is never going to be easy unless they have a brilliant product priced aggressively that a certain uniqueness to it and boasts of useful features that the competition does not offer.

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As IAB has mentioned earlier, Hyundai Motor has set up a plant in Turkey to meet rising demands for the i20 after labor strikes bogged down production here in its Chennai plant. Hyundai had also stated that the absence of free trade agreement between India and Europe made it unfavorable to continue exports.

The Turkey plant will produce more versions of the Hyundai i20 for the European markets from May 2010. A MPV version was also spotted testing last week.

The three and four door versions of the Hyundai i20 are being manufactured by Hyundai Motor India and supposedly the five door version will be produced at the plant at Izmit next year.

The annual production of this plant will be 80,000 units which will cater mainly to European markets.

‘Made for the hardest places on earth’

That is the tag line given to the Mahindra Pik-up (Scorpio Getaway) in Australia. Synchromesh Marketing with clients like BMW and Volkswagen, is the one behind this ad.

The Mahindra Pik-Up was launched in Australia in 2007 and what you see here is the first advertisement of the vehicle which went on air in TV channels of Australia. It depicts the refreshed Pik-up‘s unshakable in any adverse conditions and serves its purpose without a jerk.

Claire Tynan, CEO of Mahindra Automotive Australia -

TV is the easiest way to achieve wider reach and to catch the attention of the masses

Mahindra is excited about the campaign and expects boost in sales, IAB will keep an eye on that as well.

Honda CR-V, a product that shares many features with the Honda Civic is still not the best seller or ‘the’ SUV in the Indian market.

To make it a more tempting buy, Modulo and Mugen are offering accessories to both the US-spec and UK-spec 2010 Honda C-RVs.

The new CR-V on the block will feature new front and rear bumpers which are definitely more sporty, new grille and 19 inch alloys.

Along with those goodies, you also get a new exhaust system, side skirts, roof spoiler plus a pressure monitoring system by Mugen.

You must check the pictures after the break to understand the additions.

One of our favorite Fiats, the Grande Punto, has got an adorable face lift, an almost different front end and a few more changes on the rear (visible in the images). We have been having a watchful eye on the face lifted model for the last few months.

This model is not yet reached the production, it will come only after its debut at the Frankfurt show in September.

The hugely successful Grande Punto was launched almost four years go in 2005 in Europe and has proved to be one of the best in the segment. It was launched very recently in India with petrol and diesel engines.

The earlier design was also admired and appreciated a lot, so changing it would have been a bit of a challenge.

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