Indian car market’s sub-four metre compact sedan segment is fast heating up. What with most car manufacturers fast entering the highly popular segment? The Swift Dzire has been posting stellar sales figures ever since it was launched and the recently launched Honda Amaze looks all set to become the most successful car from the Indian subsidiary of Honda Cars.
As we have been reporting, jumping into the compact sedan bandwagon in near future will be the Indian subsidiary of Korean car maker giant Hyundai. The Accent sedan, from two generations earlier, is currently the cheapest sedan in car maker’s product portfolio and hasn’t really been bringing many lower C segment sedan buyers to the car maker’s dealerships.
It has now emerged that Hyundai might be readying a new compact sedan for our market. This sedan will be based on the HB20S compact sedan that was recently launched in Brazil. The HB20S is a Brazil-exclusive model and is highly based on the i20 hatchback that we have on sale in our country. While Hyundai’s India-spec compact sedan will boast of a styling similar to that of the HB20S, it will come with a smaller boot that will enable it to benefit from reduced excise duty from Govt. of India.
Powering the car will be the same engines that power the India spec i20 hatchback. This means that the car would get an 80 PS 1.2-litre Kappa engine for the petrol variant and the 90 PS 1.4-litre CRDi engine for the diesel variant. The petrol engine will also get the option of an automatic transmission. As for the diesel, it might get the six-speed manual transmission that is no longer available on the i20 diesel.
Safely expect the car to get a price tag that would undercut that of the Honda Amaze.
Via Car India