Tata Motors has a lot planned for this year. At the upcoming Auto Expo, which takes place in early February, Tata is expected to showcase a completely redesigned Vista (codenamed Falcon 4) and a compact, sub-4 meter version of the Manza (codename Falcon 5).
Karl Slym, Managing Director of Tata Motors, wrote a column in The Hindu Business Line newspaper stating the challenges faced by the industry and the slowdown in the auto industry. Though Mr. Slym is not very optimistic about the first half of 2014 (in terms of sales performance), he reveals that Tata will bring a "completely new range of cars" this year, along with an "all-new" petrol engine. On the new cars and the petrol engine, Mr. Slym seems very bullish.
Tata's new petrol powerplant is likely to be a turbocharged unit displacing about 1.2-liters. Early reports cited that this engine would output close to 100 bhp, though Tata is yet to reveal further details.
With the majority of sales coming from diesel models (especially for a company like Tata given that all their products sans the Nano come with a diesel option), Tata's petrol offerings do not perform as well as their competition, in terms of sales and performance.
The Vista petrol currently uses a 1.2-liter engine producing only 65 PS. We suspect that the new 1.2-liter turbo-petrol engine could be used on the refreshed Vista and Manza CS to begin with.
[Source - Business Line]
