South Korean car maker, SsangYong has unveiled all-new large premium SUV Concept named as ‘LIV-1’ at the 2013 Seoul International Motor Show. On this occasional evening, SsangYong CEO, Lee Yoo-il, said that they are working on developing a new platform which will be the base of their future cars for global market. The first car to roll out on this new platform will be an eco-friendly compact crossover. We bet that upcoming compact crossover is aiming to compete the upcoming Ford Ecosport.
Furthermore, Lee Yoo-il added saying the future can be seen in the compact models of the cars and thus company is also planning such models to develop and lay in the market for the consumers. The official also said that market will be going to soon witness a new compact crossover too just like the Ford EcoSport, Renault’s Captur and Peugeot 3008. The upcoming compact SUV will be the Mahindra-SsangYong EcoSport Rival for India and similar markets where EcoSport is sold.
SsangYong’s strategy is straightforward. The present market demand is for compact SUVs that deliver decent performance, while offering good fuel economy. Thus, they have already invested around $200 million on this project co-developed with M&M and the work is in process codenamed ‘X100’. If everything goes well, Ssangyong compact sports utility vehicle (SUV) might see the light of the day by 2015.
Starting with Rexton and Karondo C, Ssangyong is in the process of launching at least 4 products in the next 2-3 years. One of them would be the compact SUV, while the fourth product will be another variant of the compact SUV. The compact SUV segment has been attracting lot of interest within the Indian auto industry. Companies including Maruti, Honda, Hyundai and Tata too have announced products in this segment.
Check out more pictures below the jump.
Also see – 2012 Auto Expo – M&M, SsangYong’s Rexton analysed
