We brought you spy pics of the Hyundai H800 small car for India day before yesterday. We simply couldn’t stop trying to get details about the small Hyundai being tested under heavy camouflage. We had a detailed discussion with our avid follower who caught the mule. We were told the car looked taller than an Hyundai i10 and had the i10′s headlamps.
After hours of observations and estimations, we passed on our thougths to our ‘Design Director’ SRK, who almost instantly came up with this rendering of what the new Hyundai small car could look like.
Here are our observations of the spied Hyundai H800 small car that translated into this rendering. The car looked taller but narrower than an i10. The car had a plain side walls (signs of a low cost car). The camouflaged car has an interesting design element in the rear, the rear tail lamps (a white element sandwiched between two red elements vertically) were extended a little form the rear windscreen. The Nissan Micra and the new 2011 Maruti Swift could have such a design but the lamps were positioned a bit higher, so it cant be a Micra and the lamps weren’t as edgy as the Swift, so it is neither.
The observed profile at the rear look dangerously close to the previous rendering of the Hyundai H800 we had showed you (though the styling looked too futuristic the profile is the same).
As all Hyundais are, the sides of the car would look plain but interestingly styled nose and rear would manage to make the car look better. The sped car had the same traits.
The car could come with a small 800cc engine developed by Hyundai and would compete with the Maruti Alto and the upcoming 800cc Chevrolet Spark.
Spied while undergoing testing near Koyambedu, on the outskirts of Chennai, one of our regular readers Tarun Kumar Tripathy, might have caught what could be the Hyundai H800 small car. To the naked eye, the compact hatchback appeared to be dimensionally similar to Hyundai’s i10.
The car was spotted with so much camouflage that some of it even poured on to the rear number plate. Moreover it was raining, dampening visibility.
According to Tarun Kumar Tripathy, the car caught testing had headlamps which were similar to that of the i10. The taillights also seem to possess some sort of resemblance to the i10. Only the head and tail lights of the test mule were visible with everything else heavily camouflaged.
The Hyundai H800 is expected to be launched in Q1 2011 with an 800cc engine. This could be one of the early prototypes of the car testing for a variety of reasons. It is difficult to ascertain whether this is in fact the H800 or some other car. Manufacturers testing prototypes with different badges and bumpers are not new.
But should we tell you that we will be keeping a close eye on the progress of this car through its development and you must watch this space closely?
Garagemdojoao has posted a computer-generated drawing of the 2011 Hyundai H800 small car on it website. The rendering should be extremely accurate given its printed on the latest edition of Auto Esporte, a highly sought after magazine in South American regions.
Said to be priced at around 2 lakh rupees, the Hyundai H800 is supposed to come out in 2011 with a 800cc engine. There should be a 5-speed manual gearbox offered initially. Based on the demand, this baby Hyundai will receive further upgrades including diesel engine and possibly even an electric powertrain.
It is very clear from Garagemdojoao’s rendering that Hyundai will use the same design language featuring on cars like ix35, Sonata YF, new Verna etc.
There have been countless speculations on Hyundai’s forthcoming compact car scheduled for production at the company’s facility in Chennai starting next year. While we have officially heard it will be a 800cc car, IAB has understood from its sources that the new vehicle will have a twist of i10 and Santro in its looks. Being the smallest Hyundai you can buy, it will be smaller than the entry-level Santro. One newspaper has even quoted an official divulging its starting price.
The Hyundai H800 could use a 5-speed manual transmission. There is a possibility of a diesel engine on this small car in the future, but during the launch next year sometime in March or April (speculative), it is expected with a 3-cylinder 800cc engine producing about 50hp.
Image manipulator Samuh Yogetta has published his version of the side view of the small car. The front-end borrows quite a lot from the ix-onic concept. The kink as the window nears the C-Pillar reminds us of the i10.
Being a low cost vehicle, will it be eligible for a full blast of Hyundai’s fluidic sculpture design language applied on cars like the new Sonata and new Verna? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Will the surprise car at the Auto Expo be the small car prototype?
After the launch of the i20 diesel and automatic, Hyundai has not been much in the news. At least not for the right reasons as labor and the lack of free trade agreement between India and European countries forced Hyundai to shift a major chunk of the i20 production to Turkey.
Now, the company has revealed exciting details. We’ll give them numbers for easier assimilation.
1) Hyundai i40 -
Hyundai claims the i40/new Sonata YF will arrive in India “Sooner or later” but no date has been decided. We expect the Sonata YF to be brought in a CBU and compete with the likes of the Camry, Accord, Superb and Teana.
2) Hyundai’s surprise car -
Hyundai India says it will display “a surprising product” at next year’s Auto Expo in Delhi. We suspect this will be a prototype of their small car scheduled for 2011. This will be a repetition of what happened in the 2008 edition of the Expo with the Suzuki A-Star concept followed by production later in the year. This time at least we expect the concept to stick closer to the prototype version.
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We brought you spy pics of the Hyundai H800 small car for India day before yesterday. We simply couldn’t stop trying to get details about the small Hyundai being tested under heavy camouflage. We had a detailed discussion with our avid follower who caught the mule. We were told the car looked taller than an Hyundai i10 and had the i10′s headlamps.
