IndiBlog

GM India is bringing in the latest series Chevrolet Optra to India by middle of 2009. The car would be christened Chevrolet Cruze and will be sold alongside the Optra but at a higher price point of Rs. 12-13 lakh. The Cruze has been developed by GM-DAT (Daewoo) but is expected to be on par with the Civic and Jetta in terms of fit and finish and performance levels. The Cruze is also a much larger car, comprable in size to the VW Passat or Hyundai Sonata. The Cruze has it's world premiere scheduled at the Paris Motor Show in October' 2008. GM would be plonking an all new 1.8 litre petrol engine along with the 150 bhp diesel unit from the Chevrolet Captiva. This 2 litre 150 bhp variable geometry diesel mill would make the Cruze a blast to drive and maybe the best performing diesel saloon in it's class. The Cruze would be the first car model to roll out of GM's new plant at Chakan near Pune.

I expect the Cruze to sell well, especially the diesel version which would offer tremendous performance coupled with reasonable fuel bills.

Since the Auto Expo 2008 where the A-Star had it's world premiere, Maruti Suzuki has been working overtime to ensure that the car is ready for launch by end 2008. Now that a few prototypes of the A-Star have been caught testing it looks certain that the car would be ready for launch by Diwali' 2008. The A-Star is being launched with a 3 cylinder, 1 litre, 64 bhp motor which would offer Alto like fuel efficiency. A 1.2 litre, 80 bhp petrol unit would also be offered to compete with the i10 Kappa. However maximum sales are expected from the 1 litre, more fuel efficient version.

The pricing is expected between Rs.3-4 lakh with airbags and ABS on the top end version. The A-Star looks like a small car out from a animation movie especially from the front which is cartoonishly cute due to the oddly shaped headlamps and massive bumper with a large grille resembling a gaping mouth. The Suzuki A-Star looks the best from the rear which is very sporty and Swift like with nice shunky tail lamps and a muscular rear bumper.

World Premiere Launch of the A-Star at Auto Expo' 08

Blaupunkt, a Bosch owned in-car entertainment company which has been present in India for sometime now has forayed into the in-car navigation market with the launch of three models under the TravelPilot series. The model range is priced between Rs 18,990-25,990 following premium pricing just like with their in-car entertainment products. Blaupunkt is the third entrant after SatNav and MapmyIndia in this nascent market, which is estimated to sell about 50,000 units this year.

Blaupunkt's would however use the maps from MapmyIndia (for a royalty fee) and contain information on about 170 cities across the country. The maps will provide the usual data including, road and navigation information across the country through national highways, state highways and other major roads apart from providing a huge number of point of interests like restaurants, hospitals, ATMs, fuel pumps, malls etc.

Another Ferrari co-branded product in the market with Motorola teaming up with Italian sports car manufacturer to launch the MOTORAZR 2 V9 Ferrari 3G enabled handset in the Indian market.

The new handset is priced at Rs 21,840 and would be available exclusively at the Mobile Store for the first week of its launch. The phone comes with a funky racing interface, 2 mega pixel camera and has expandable memory up to 2 GB. This is however not a limited edition.

Just when we were beginning to believe that Tata would be using Fiat's under-development 2 cylinder diesel engine for the Nano, Tata Motors has revealed it's plans of using a diesel engine developed by German powertrain maker FEV. This diesel unit is also a 2 cylinder CRDi one but with a turbocharger and fuel injection system developed by Bosch. It will be 800cc and deliver about 25 kmpl! This would make the Nano as cheap to run as a 180cc bike and entice bike owners to upgrade readily. However the diesel Nano would be in showrooms only by mid-2009.

Hyundai has launched the hot selling i10 hatchback with a new 1.2 litre 'Kappa' engine. The new engine is an all aluminium unit with DOHC and four valves per cylinder, producing 80PS and making the i10 a really fun and peppy hatchback to drive. The new engine would be offered along with the existing 1.1 litre engine, which is the same as the Santro. The base D-lite and Era models would be sold with the existing 1.1 litre engine while the Magma variant plus two new variants; Sportz and Asta, would be sold with the 1.2 litre, Kappa engine. The 1.2 litre Kappa engined variants would also be offered with the choice of a 4-speed automatic transmission. Fully loaded variants would come with goodies like a sunroof, 2-Din sound system, a red pack Sportz interior and class leading safety features like ABS and dual airbags.

Hyundai is likely to price the 1.2 litre Kappa engine variants aggressively at only about Rs. 10,000 more than the 1.1 litre versions. This would make the i10 a performance hatch with great value and a great city hatch.