We reported recently when Tata Motors hired global soccer superstar Lionel Messi as their brand ambassador. Without wasting any time after announcing the association, the Indian car company has released the first TV commercial with the soccer star to promote their upcoming hatchback, the Kite.
The video, showing the journey of Messi from being a child prodigy to a football legend, focuses on what made him great. After talking briefly about the tribulations the footballer faced on his journey to greatness, the ad asserts that what drives you from within makes you great. The hashtag #madeofgreat associated with the campaign tries to bring the point home that Tata Motors, driven by design, technology, and the road ahead, will achieve greatness with its new products.
It’s a rather well made ad, we’d say. Artistic and communication aspects aside, the new ad also gives us a closer look at the car maker’s upcoming hatchback, the Kite through a few teaser images. Purely from a product standpoint, the images suggest that the Kite will probably be a very differently styled Tata product. After taking the game a notch higher with the Bolt, the Indian carmaker seems intent on matching its international counterparts on the styling and other fronts with its newest offering. The choice of an international star for the promotional campaign also hints at the company’s confidence in the product as a truly international offering.
The Tata Kite has been spied several times on test in India, though none of the times it has been caught sans camouflage. In that sense, the teaser video throws in several hints at what the new car may look like. From what we can gather from the video, the car will have a bold new grille with a honeycomb mesh styling with the Tata emblem sitting slam bang in the middle. The lower lip of the grille will get a chrome lining, with the upper portion done in body colour and offering some surface between the bonnet lip and the grille.
Read: Motoroids reader spies Tata Kite hatchback in Pune
Unlike the Bolt, the kite will not get projector headlamps, and will make do with regulation clear lens units. The headlamps taper sharply towards the grille with the turn indicators positioned on the inside. Tail lamps feature blinkers in clear lens with curvy brake lights, possibly LEDs wrapping them on the outside.
On the sides, one can see the body coloured door handles with sharply styled triangular recesses which give the door handle area a sporty look. Check out all the images extracted from the video in the article to have a closer look at the teaser images.
The Kite will also spawn a compact sedan version which will try and fill the shoes of the Indigo CS.
In our earlier spy images, we showed you what the interior of the car may look like. The spied car had an all-black dashboard with rectangular air-con vents. The infotainment system as visible from the outside looked similar to the touchscreen enabled Harman unit found on the Tata Bolt / Zest duo. This audio system has support for AUX-in, USB, SD card and Bluetooth connectivity, and tops the segment in terms of audio output. The three spoke steering wheel on the new Kite is also expected to be the same multifunction unit as found on the Bolt and Zest.
Read: Interior of the Tata Kite hatchback spied
Under the bonnet of the upcoming Tata Kite, is supposedly a new 1.05-litre (64 bhp / 140 Nm ), 3-pot diesel and a 1.2-litre petrol (Revotron from Bolt / Zest) engine. The new hatchback is expected to be offered with a manual and an AMT gearbox.
If not that, the upcoming Tata Kite is rumoured to try and break the AMT tech down further and come equipped with something called an e-Clutch. The system takes over the clutch operation during stop-go traffic, leaving the driver to only deal with gearshifts. Developed by Bosch in 2013, the eClutch automates the clutch only, not the transmission. The clutch pedal transmits an electric signal to an actuator, which decouples the clutch and allows drivers using manual transmission to use first gear without using the clutch.
The Kite, part of Tata’s ambitious HORIZONEXT strategy, will be produced at Tata Motors’ Sanand facility in Gujarat. Expect the price to be reasonably below the Bolt hatchback, making the Kite a great value for money product upon its launch.
The Kite seems ready for its India debut and may be launched early next year post a media reveal in December. We’ll be filling you in with all the details. Stay tuned.
Here’s the promotional video, followed by the teaser extracts from the video
https://youtu.be/a4MFmVq0Hfs
