Toyota Kirloskar Motors has officially discontinued the Toyota Urban Cruiser from the Indian Market. There is no official statement if there will be a replacement for the same.
Official Statement
“The company continuously studies the market to understand the changing customer preferences and focus on delivering them ever-better cars with enhanced and sustainable technologies. In alignment to this philosophy, we have decided to phase out the Toyota Urban Cruiser, firmly believing that our existing strong and sustainable product line-up in India will help us cater to the demand in the market,” Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) stated.
Urban Cruiser Failure?
Introduced in 2020, the Toyota Urban Cruiser was a rebadged Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza. Till date TKM has managed to sell 65,000 units which according to them is a low number. Also, these sales have majorly come from Tier II and Tier III cities. This has indicated that the car is not very popular among the general buyers.
The discontinuation of the Urban Cruiser is not a shock as we were expecting a newer version of the car to be introduced since MSIL has already introduced the new Brezza in the market. However, reports indicate that, the Brezza won’t be rebadged for another Toyota car.
Toyota’s Portfolio In India
Toyota currently has two products that they do not share with Maruti-Suzuki – Innova Crysta and the Fortuner. Their other cars include the Glanza and the Urban Cruiser Hyryder which share their platform with the Baleno and Grand Vitara respectively. The Innova is going to get an update soon in the for of the Toyota Hycross.
Will We See More “Toyota” Cars?
Since the Suzuki-Toyota partnership, buyers have been asking Toyota to bring a “real” Toyota to the market. Given Toyota’s brand image and trust its customers have, Toyota might just give in to the demand of the masses. If you think about it, Toyota did not scrap the “Urban Cruiser” name. It just got transfered to another car – Urban Cruiser Hyryder. While Maruti-Suzuki renamed the Vitara Brezza to just Brezza and named their new offering the Grand Vitara. This could mean that Toyota discontinued the Urban Cruiser just to create space for another car.
Also Read: Upcoming Toyota Innova Hycross To Get Panoramic Sunroof
Toyota Raize
If the above speculation is to be true, there is a good, no great chance that we could see the Toyota Raize in India. If we dial back a few years, the Raize was supposedly to enter India in 2019. However, since the Maruti-Toyota partnership took fruit, we got the Urban Cruiser instead. The Raize pretty much has the makings of a great Sub-4 meter SUV. It’s designed like the RAV4 which is a very popular crossover SUV in the internal markets. It also has a 1.0L turbo petrol engine and gets a 1.2L naturally asprirated engine. Comes in both manual and CVT transmission options. It has enough kit to take on the likes of the Venue, Brezza, Nexon and the Sonet.
What plans Toyota has for the empty space the Urban Cruiser has created are best known to them. For now, we can speculate and in a way hint Toyota what products we actually want to see. 😉