Maruti has been secretly working on the 800’s replacement, which was caught testing last month. Well this time, we bring you official news. Maruti Suzuki India’s managing executive officer (engineering) IV Rao has stated that Maruti Suzuki is aggressively working on an all-new small car.
Thanks AutoCarIndia Magazine for illustrating how the Maruti 800 will look like. Maruti’s new small car will directly compete against the top end variants of the Tata Nano and will slot below the Alto. The company has said that the new 800 cc small car will co-exist with India’s largest selling car Maruti Alto that is clocking monthly sales of over 30,000 units, at present.
The Maruti Alto, which is the top selling car in India, is at present the best and most affordable small car from Maruti except for Maruti 800 which is phased out from 13 cities of India because of implementation of BS4 emission norms have been implemented by the government of India. Though the Maruti 800 model was expected to be upgraded to make it compatible to the new emission norms, company has decided to phase-out the car.
“This will be an all-new car, though based on an existing platform. The idea is to do it in-house at Maruti, with minimal support from our Japanese parent, Suzuki. The idea behind the model is to constantly introduce new models while also developing the company’s R&D capability to develop, design and engineer a model on its own,” IV Rao, Managing Executive Officer (engineering), Maruti Suzuki, said.
The development of the new 800 cc car can be seen as a very crucial decision taken by the company as its closest rival Hyundai is all set to launch a new 800cc small car in the Indian market by this year end. It will be interesting to see how the developments take place. IV Rao did not disclose any timeline, but we expect that the car will be showcased at the Auto Expo 2012 in January 2012 and will be subsequently launched in India.
Also see– Spied – 2012 Maruti 800 small car
Image credit – AutoCarIndia (Via Team-bhp)
(Note – The image is computer-generated based on exclusive spy pictures last month)
