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| Global recession turn car-makers festive |
| Bijoy Kumar Y / Mumbai Aug 28, 2009, 00:21 IST |
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This festive season will see more car launches than ever before.
 There was a time not so long ago when automotive giants took scant notice of the Indian festival season. Increasing competition and recession in Europe and the US have forced them to change their outlook and time their launches around the festive months just like consumer goods companies do.
With cars, though, the stakes are pretty high. If you thought the full-page advertisements for the Toyota Fortuner and the Maruti Suzuki Estillo are indicators of automotive industry trying to wriggle out of a global recession, well, you could be right.
While the Fortuner, despite its Rs 22 lakh on-road price tag, has been received exceptionally well, the Estillo with its Rs 3.5 lakh price tag, a brand new K-Series engine and new look will have to fight it out with other contemporary cars from the Suzuki stables like the A-Star and the Ritz.
Maruti Suzuki, in a bid to modernise its fleet of cars, will be launching more cars with the K-series engines and the next one to go through the heart transplant will be the highly successful Swift. With a 1.2 litre engine in place of the ageing 1.3 litre Esteem-derived motor; the Swift will attract less excise duty and hence will become more attractive to the prospective buyers.
The new Ford Endeavour, scheduled sometime next month, is supposed to give the Toyota Fortuner a run for its money. What it lacks on the power front to the Toyota, the big Ford makes up with sheet metal and glass.
Honda is fresh from launching the Jazz, its premium hatchback, but we hear two face-lifts are due for the festive season — with the “new, improved” Honda Civic leading the way.
The first serious offering from the new GM India will be the Chevrolet Cruz — a car that slots between the current Optra and the Skoda Octavia. The Cruz will feature an economical yet potent 2.0 litre diesel engine and a petrol motor will follow suit.
 A more significant launch though may come towards the end of the year, if not early 2010, when the all-new Beat small car is launched from the new car plant near Pune. GM will keep the Chevrolet Spark in production though at a price point that will attract more and more Tata Nano buyers.
Tata Motors will flex its affordable car USP again with a good looking sedan — the Indigo Vista and it will have modern, Fiat-derived diesel and petrol engines going for it.
Sold alongside the Tata Indigo, Vista will be a more powerful version of the Fiat Linea (this time with a turbo-petrol option) in petrol and diesel variants. This is an indicator that Fiat is taking feedback from its customers seriously.
A spanking new Mercedes-Benz E-Class is due anytime now. The W212 model E-Class is an attempt from Mercedes-Benz to go back to the “carved from a billet” days of yore and will be launched with a petrol engine (E350) and a diesel will follow suit later. Expect the price range to be around Rs 45-50 lakh.
BMW is all set to create some interest in their showrooms with the stunning new Z4 convertible which will be sold through the CBU route.
The icing on the festival season cake will be the new Volkswagen (VW) Beetle. It will come through the CBU (completely built unit) route, so it will be prohibitively expensive at Rs 12-15 lakh. Still, it will do VW a world of good to get its message across to prospective customers of the volume seller, the New Polo, to be unveiled at the Auto Expo in January, 2010.
Expect VW to price the Polo aggressively though it is a bit of a challenge with the equally well-built Skoda Fabia still around. The Czech arm of VW will, by the way, unveil the Yeti — a mini SUV at Rs 15-20 lakh that could appeal to urban dwellers.
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