Hyundai Accent To Cruise Local Roads Next Sept

The dismal performance of the midsize luxury cars in India has not deterred Korean auto major Hyundai Motors' plans to launch its sedan `Accent' in the country, a senior company official has said.

Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) would introduce accent -- its second car for the country -- in September next year, for which trial production would begin three months before the launch, executive director of HMIL, J H Kim said.

"We believe the slump in the luxury segment would be over in the near future and certainly there is a good market for these types of cars in India," Kim pointed out .

 

Codenamed 'LC', Accent would be priced below Rs 6 lakh to take on Honda's City and Maruti's Esteem, the executive director said.

The company has already imported a few cars for trial runs on Indian road conditions, which is going on in different parts of the country, Kim said.

Accent would be equipped with specific features to suit Indian road conditions like a novel fuel injection system and suspensions from that of its international model to be launched next year, he said.

Hyundai is planning to introduce the car in both the 1.3 litre and 1.5 litre displacements and the automobile would be manufactured at the Chennai plant of the company.

The 100 per cent subsidiary of the Korean Chaebol is launching the small car `Santro' in October this year.

Kim said the company was also considering a diesel version for the Accent but would decide upon the model later.

"We are planning to launch a diesel variant of Accent. But first we want to get the response to the petrol version and then only the diesel version will follow," he said.

Kim said road shows for Santro would be held in 15 cities across the country in the second half of this month as part of the marketing strategy for the small car. Hyundai will introduce the car in five variants, including a semi-automatic version and all the cars would be priced between three and four lakh. While the basic entry model 'L1' will be a non-air conditioned car, the second variant 'L2' will be equipped with one.

Two other versions in the 'GLS' series will have features like central locking and power steering. The third in this series is a semi-automatic version.

Hyundai Motor India is also planning to introduce a fully automatic version of Santro next year, Kim said.

Hyundai would manufacture about 20,000 Santros this fiscal at its Chennai plant which has a total production capacity of 1.20 lakh cars per annum.

Santro will have an indigenisation level of over 75 per cent from the first vehicle, Hyundai Motor India executive director informed.

He added that India would be the biggest market of Hyundai Motors after the United States and Australia.