When Atos Turns Santro For India

A world premiere for an automobile? In India? Yes, Hyundai has done that with its strangely named car, Santro. The car still retains the essentials of the Atos platform that Hyundai developed for the domestic Korean market. Atos was derived from the concept car HMX that attracted a lot of attention when it was unveiled at the Seoul Motor Show in July 1997. But by September 1997, the Hyundai Atos was ready for production and was officially launched at the Frankfurt International motor show.

The Atos platform was the weapon that the largest car maker from South Korea would use to wage a mini car battle with Daewoo in the domestic market. Daewoo with the Tico, the Korean version of the Suzuki-Maruti 800, has dominated the mini-car segment in South Korea for the last eight years.

 

Atos has already managed a 70 per cent share of the market segment for small cars after its late 1997 launch in South Korea.

The Atos platform was modified for India and was renamed the Santro. The most obvious change is in the rear end of the car where the lines were rounded off since the marketing clinics using the prototype in India showed a definite dislike for angular lines. The Atos platform is engineered for safety and meets European regulations, and the Santro will benefit from this. Apart from these structural modifications, the car also features additional ground clearance to tackle the Indian terrain.

Heart of the Hyundai Santro is the four cylinder 12 valve (Epsilon) engine. This is the first ever mutli-valve engine to power a small car in India. The 1000 cc unit is capable of developing 55 bhp at 5500 rpm, which is 5 bhp more than the Zen. The engine benefits from mutli-point fuel injection and is modified to suit the quality of petrol available in the country.

The 1000cc unit was opted against the 800cc version that powers the car in South Korea since the former offers better drivability in city traffic conditions. The Korean tax regulations favours a 800cc engine capacity to the 1000cc unit. All the power that is developed by this modern day power plant is transferred to the front wheels by using either a five speed manual transmission or a revolutionary semi-automatic gear box. The semi-automatic transmission is an industry first in India,.