New Delhi: Nissan drove into the entry sedan segment in India on Tuesday with Sunny, pricing the base variant at Rs 5.78 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The model will be manufactured at the company’s Chennai plant and will compete with cars like Maruti’s Dzire, Ford’s Fiesta Classic and Toyota’s Etios.

The Sunny is the second car to be manufactured at Chennai after the Micra hatchback and the Japanese automaker said it plans to sell more than 40,000 vehicles in the Indian market this financial year. The Sunny sports a 1.5-liter petrol engine and Gilles Normand, Nissan’s V-P for Africa, Middle East & India, said the model will focus on the Indian market. “While the Micra has been developed with a big eye on the export markets, the Sunny will have India as a key market.”

Nissan plans to sell nine models in India by 2012, four of which will be imported. The auto maker said it will source more than 85% of the parts for the Sunny from vendors in India, including 40% from suppliers based out of Chennai. Nissan currently imports and sells the X-Trail sport utility vehicle, the premium Teana sedan and the 370Z sports car in India.

Honda is finally stepping in to the mass market category in India with the introduction of the Brio. Marrying a quality product to sensitive pricing is a utopian idea; however the Brio has been conceived out of this very line of thought. Vikram Gour got behind the wheel to see if this little car lives up to being a mass mobile yet retaining Honda’s DNA

It takes a lot to build a small car that is destined to fight it out in the cut throat premium hatchback segment in India. The wish list of customers for this particular segment lies over such a wide range of choices and options that any one car maker will find it a daunting task to try and actually cater to fulfilling every single need. The result is there for all of us to see and each manufacturer that has stepped into this segment has ushered in a unique selling point of their own.

Some ideas have worked, some have been a little lackluster, however the growing trend is that the premium hatchback marketplace is ever evolving and at the same time it is getting crowded as more and more manufacturers are looking at getting their hands on a slice of the pie for this is the largest selling segment in India. It’s good business sense to have a product in this segment, especially when you are a brand that caters to the masses. Honda has known all of this only too well and finally they are ready with their small mass car arsenal, the Honda Brio (pronounced: Br-ee-oo).

The Brio is a car that has been conceived for markets such as India. In fact a lot of the preliminary studies for the car have been carried out in India.

The story started a few years back when Honda conducted various surveys across the country in order to gauge the audience requirement as well as gain a better understanding on what exactly they will have to build from scratch. Representatives went across the country and met with a lot of people who fit the demographic requirement of wanting to own a premium hatchback.

They also conducted studies of their own in terms of buying patterns as well as a deeper look at the lifestyles of potential customers. Apart from that, they also checked out the potential competition and drove those cars, understood their place in the market and more importantly, Honda also checked those vehicles to figure out what are the common problem areas that customers find with those models.

Post this detailed study, Honda drafted the requirements of what the Brio should be. In fact the study boiled down to three core needs of the Indian customer, which included the need to express themselves, the need to ferry around family safely and the need to be frugal. These needs were further drafted into the core values that a Honda small car should possess, namely, a strong presence, space and low fuel consumption.

Armed with these traits, Honda set out to make the Brio a vehicle that encompassed advance design, efficient packaging and intelligent performance all for the price that would be competitive in the Indian context.

Now, building a small car that covers these elements as well as the inherent need to make it a quality product that fits in well with the Honda brand name might not seem like a tough task, however when you bring in the element of the cut throat pricing war that exists in this segment and the need for Honda to get the pricing spot on, then the development of this vehicle takes on a challenge of its own.

In hindsight, this reason could have been why Honda has taken its time in entering the mass product market, however the company’s penchant to get things right seems to have prevailed over the introduction of the Brio, especially since they burnt their fingers with the introduction of the Jazz at such an exorbitant price point. The Brio is what Honda thinks a small car should be; every element in building this car has been scrutinized.

It’s the company’s translation of the market requirement and guided by the predetermined core values, the Brio, in essence, has been designed to pack in all the elements desired by potential customers, or as Honda claims, it’s a Micro Metropolitan Jet.

The first value pillar laid down for the Brio was a strong presence. The designers have worked hard to give this little car a well proportioned stance that marries in many design cues associated with larger Honda products. According to the designers, the Brio is essentially based on a double triangle theme. The top triangle lies inverted and adds a flair of sleek dynamism, while the bottom upright triangle ushers in the sporty stance. Together these elements give the car a stance that signifies forward motion.

With an underlying theme of active dynamism, the Brio had to have the right elements in place to give it a significantly higher visual appeal than its closest competitors. In doing so, the car has received a wider stance and the elements such as the sculpted hood, large headlights that flow into the body lines, large Honda logo and the flared wheel arcs paint a uniform picture in the minds eye of a small, yet purposefully built car.

Bangalore: After a very successful run for six years since its launch, India’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki Ltd has refreshed its popular car Swift by re-launching its new version. In the last six years Maruti sold 6 lakh Swift cars and yet, there is a 2 to 3 months waiting period for the car. On Thursday, the company launched the new version of Swift in the City at an aggressive introductory price starting from Rs 4.39 lakh for the petrol version and Rs 5.16 lakh for the diesel version (both ex-showroom Bangalore).

With over 140 new features, the new Swift offers best in class acceleration, high power to weight ratio and much improved fuel efficiency, the company claimed. Built on an all new platform, the new Swift is wider, longer and up to 30 kg lighter than its predecessor.

By reducing the weight of the car, Maruti engineers enhanced the power-to-weight ratio in the new Swift, which, in turn, has raised the fuel efficiency by 6 per cent in diesel and 4 per cent in the petrol. The company, along with its suppliers have invested around Rs 550 crore in developing new Swift.

Though Maruti will be using the same 1.2 litre K-series petrol and 1.3 litre CRDi diesel engines in the new Swift, the company has tweaked them for better performance. The 1.2 litre VVT petrol engine delivers torque of 114 Nm @ 4000 rpm and power of 87 ps @ 6000 rpm.

The 1.3 litre DDiS diesel delivers torque of 190 Nm @2000 rpm and power of 75 ps @ 4000 rpm. With the launch of new Swift, the competition in the premium compact car segment (Maruti has 30 per cent market share in this segment) is bound to increase.

This segment is already very competitive with cars like Hyundai i20, Toyota Liva, Ford Figo, General Motors Beat and U-VA, and Volkswagen Polo. Soon Honda will be launching its hatchback ‘Brio’ in this category. “Competition is good for us. We are leaders in the segment and have a third of the market. More noise people make, the leader benefits more,” said Maruti Suzuki India Limited Executive Officer Pankaj Nerula.

Maruti also announced that it already has booking for 50,000 units of new Swift cars and will ramp up its production from 12,000 to 18,000 Swift cars in a month by the end of the year.

New Delhi: The Chevrolet Beat diesel launch is expected to be a game changer in the compact diesel segment for General Motors, which did not have any new product launches for a long time. Currently, the Chevrolet Beat powered by a 1.2 litre engine is priced in the range of . 3.89 lakh (on road Delhi) to . 5.17 lakh for the top end variant. The Beat diesel will be powered by a one-litre engine and priced at least  50,000-. 80,000 more than the petrol variant. Industry experts are worried that the one litre powerhouse may not give all that power but it will add volumes for the Detroit major. The Ford Figo diesel, powered by a 1.4 litre engine, is priced in the range of 5.01 to . 5.97 lakh (onroad Delhi).

Coimbatore: General Motors India would launch the diesel variant of its Chevrolet Beat in the Indian market on July 25, a top company official said here today.

“With fluctuation in fuel prices in India from time to time, the new diesel Beat, the prices of which will be announced at the launch will revolutionise the small car segment, with its engine capacity and fuel economy,” Karl Slym President and Managing Director General Motors India told reporters here.

The company, which sold about 1.1 lakh cars last year in India, was doubling its growth rate in India as compared to industry average and expected to sell about 1.4 lakh vehicles in all variants this year,up by more than 30 per cent, he said.

Slym, here to launch a new dealership along with two attached workshops, said the outlet was 250th in India. With tremendous demand for its cars particularly in rural areas, the company would increase sales and service network to 300 locations by the end of this year, he said.

On capacity addition, he said the Halol unit in Gujarat, which produces one lakh cars a year, could add another 1.4 lakh cars, while the Talegaon unit in Maharashtra has 1.4 lakh production capacity in the first phase and capacity to produce three lakh cars, after completion of second phase in another 18 months.

Asked about the investment, Slym said the company has so far invested USD 1.5 billion in India. Another USD 250 million each would be pumped in both the manufacturing plants in another one and half years.

With 2,500 engineers in its Bangalore foundation for design and development, General Motors was meeting 90 per cent of its global requirements from India and hardly exported 2 per cent from India to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, Slym said and ruled out setting up any manufacturing plant in South India.