We have already posted about facelifted Premier Rio spotted at Mumbai-Pune expressway. Now it was again spotted by our friends at ICB team. The Premier Rio is essentially a Chinese copy of the Daihatsu Terios Mini SUV. Chinese automaker Zotye has two versions of the Terios, the older version called the Nomad I and the newer version called the Nomad II. Premier chose to launch the older version(Nomad I) in the form of the Rio in the Indian market.
Sales of this SUV have been quite tepid to say the least, mainly as the Rio’s diesel engined variant is not available in BS4 cities. This could change a bit as Premier has recently launched the BS4 complaint petrol version of the Premier Rio. Coming back to the spy shot, the image you just saw is of the facelifted Premier Rio a.k.a Zotye Nomad II in the Chinese domestic market. This facelifted Mini SUV is expected to feature a 1.3 liter Fiat Multijet diesel engine under the hood apart from the facelifted exteriors and interiors.
More importantly, the Multijet diesel engine will make the Rio BS4 compatible while means that the Mini SUV will then be available across India. Although Premier was scheduled to launch the BS4 compatible Multijet diesel engined Rio in August 2011, as indicated by the its annual general report, the automaker seems in no hurry to launch the BS4 version of the Premier Rio Diesel. Even though the potential of a Mini SUV remains great in India, Premier Limited needs to pull up its socks and ensure that it does not fritter away the first mover advantage it currently has.
Also see – 2011 Premier Rio Facelifted by this October
Source – Indiancarbikes
