Hyundai i20 India launch in November

Hyundai i20 small car will be launched in India in November or December 20008.

Hyundai i20 photo

The i20 is a hatchback car, pretty much in the same size as the Hyundai Getz it would replace eventually. Hyundai’s other hatchback cars currently in the Indian market are the Santro Xing, the i10 and i10 Jappa and the Getz Prime.

The Hyundai i20 has been making presence felt in several international motor shows. Timing would be of some importance in the i20 launch in India – November would be ideal, as in December, generally, Indian car customers wait for the new year so they could buy a car which has the latest model year.

Future Hyundai launches in India: Hyundai i20, i30 and i40

The expected price of the Hyundai i20 is between Rs 5-6 lakhs ex-showroom India. The i20 will be manufactured at HMIL’s Sriperumbudur plant, near Chennai in Tamil Nadu. The Hyundai i20 is a hatchback car designed with European sensibilities in mind. The styling is inspired by the Hyundai i30 premium hatchback, and quite similar to the i10 already on Indian roads. The Hyundai i20 is an average looker by European standards. But in Europe, the i20 competes against the Ford Fiesta (not the Indian Fiesta), and the company claims that its interior space is much larger than the Fiesta’s.

Abroad, the Hyundai i20 would comes with a choice of 2 petrols and a diesel engine. Which of them would be on offer in the Indian i20 remains to be seen.

What would India like? Diesel, obviously. That would mean the 1.4 liter or the 1.6 liter diesel engine, the former diesel powerplant offering 75 bhp and the latter 128 bhp. It is unlikely that Hyundai would take the risk of offering a 128 bhp hatchback in India, so we think it would be the 75 bhp 1.4 liter that we would finally get. Or Hyundai, like Maruti, would play it safe and give us the 1.2 liter petrol engine. Nothing to shed tears about, really, but a full fledged launch and high decibel marketing for a dual launch of the petrol and diesel i20 variants – ah, we don’t think our manufacturers have the guts for it yet.

In India, the Hyundai i20 would be pitted against the Suzuki Swift (which is getting a bit long in the tooth), the slow-selling Skoda Fabia and the upcoming Honda Jazz. The Honda Jazz would be launched only in 2009, so no immediate competition for the i20 there. The Jazz would definitely be priced higher than the i20 – and the market would gobble it up. The Fiat Grande Pundo would have offered it some competition, but Fiat’s future launches for India are as cloudy as a monsoon sky. So it would be the i20 vs the Fabia and the Swift, where it has a good chance of cornering the market.

The India-manufactured i20 may even make it to the US. Recently, Hyundai officials had said that the i20 would be really small for the American market. But the i20 is substantially larger, and might find itself a market in US.

Obviously, we expect the interiors of the Hyundai i20 to be a step up from the Getz. The European i20 cars would come in 4 trim versions, airbags, ABS, electronic stability control and EBD. Hyundai is sure to offer airbags in the Indian i20 too – the rest, we can only pray for!