Automotive News

TATA has finally unvielled the 1 lakh car at the dealer price level. This works out to about USD 2500. The end customer will be able to buy it for about 20,000 more, so between 1.2 to 1.3 lakh ruppees.

The car itself looks pretty neat and sweet. It measures 3.1 metres in length and 1.6 metres in height. The NANO is about 1.5 metres in width.

The engine of the car is a 623 cc multi point fuel injection petrol eng. The car comes with tubeless tyres which is a good poisitive surprise.

The TATA nano will have a huge advantage over other four wheelers in terms of fuel economy. The reported fuel economy the car will give is about 20 kms/ litre. Also the car is EURO 4 compliant which is great.

Volvo will now make an entry to the Indian passenger car market through three distributors. Mumbai and Delhi will be the obvious two centres while the third will soon be decided.

Volvo are also soon to start a bus building factory in Bangalore which will definitely open up some job opportunities for people there. Volvo is a market leader for luxury express coaches here and will now try its hand in the passenger car segment.

The cars which soon will be launched are the Volvo XC90 and S80 model. Volvo will be another major company to start its investment after other major companies from Sweden like SKF, ABB and Ericsson.

The Maruti Swift Diesel LDi model is now available in India for a Ex-Showroom Price of Rs. 4,84,961. This is the pricing current released in Mumbai city and is lesser in Delhi. The estimated total On-Road price for this car is close to Rs. 5.4 lakhs.

The Swift Diesel has a 43 litre fuel tank capacity along with a 1.3L DOHC DDiS Diesel engine. Other specifications include -

Power 75 PS @ 4000 rpm
Torque 190 Nm @ 2000 rpm
No of Cylinders 4 cylinder
Cylinder Configuration Inline
Valves per Cylender 4 valve

The car comes with 14 inch 165/80 R14 tyres with a Steel wheel type. It comes in various colors from blue, black, red silver, gray and one of my best, ‘Mint Frappe’.

We had earlier reported that Maruti was planning to launch the diesel version of the Maruti Swift and that has infact become a reality now.

In an interview with Business Standard, Maruti officials spoke on this topic regarding the specifications of the Maruti Swift Diesel. The car will be priced at close to Rs. 4.5 lakh ex-showroom Delhi.

The ‘Maruti Swift D’ is going to be powered by a 1.3 litre multijet Fiat engine. The company had earlier decided that they would not be manufacturing units of the Esteem diesel and the Zen diesel. The price of the Swift diesel is just Rs. 50,000 more than the base version of the Swift Petrol LXi model.

MUL has seen the rise in diesel cars which currently are 30% of the total vehicals sold in the country. According to various studies, this figure is only going to rise and could go as high as 40-50% by 2010.

Tata Motors has now launched the 2007 models for their small car, the `Tata Indica V2. The Tata Indica comes in different models like, the Tata Indica V2 Xeta - Tata India V2 Turbo.

The new Tata Indica V2 Xeta 2007 will be priced at Rs. 2.55 lacs for the lowest model and going up to Rs. 3.49 for the top model. THe Diesel variant will cost anywhere between Rs. 3.22 and Rs. 4.13 lacs. The prices noted are for ex-showroom Delhi.

The new 2007 models will be available with four new colors - Arizona Ochre, Amazon Blue, Cavern Grey and Pastel Green. The older popular colors are also available. The Indica has come with a few changes like a new sportier bumper, dual tone rear view mirrors, better looking fog lamps and slightly different tail lights.