New Verna for India soon

A new revamped Verna is set to be rolled out from Hyundai’s assembly line for the India car mart. The new Verna would debut with a fresh look after having been cosmetic face-lifts both in the front as well as in the interiors.

Hyundai is also looking at making changes to the Verna’s interiors and add a USB port to the music system. Meanwhile, the answer to the widely asked question on why Hyundai is coming out with a revamped Verna lies in the proposed relaunch of Fiat’s Linea model. The new refreshed Hyundai Verna will be able to offer better competition to the Fiat Linea, feels Hyundai. The Fiat Linea launch is expected to happen in the next ten days. Fiat Linea is considered a worthy challenger to the Honda City in vaue-for-money stakes.?

The new revamped Hyundai Verna would come with five -speed manual transmission in all variants. The Verna would come with a 1.6-litre I4 engine in the petrol variants and a 1.5L turbocharged engine in the diesel variants.

Hyundai has had some successes in India – like the Santro, Santro Xing and the i10 and i10 kappa small cars. Even the Hyundai Accent was a moderate hit. Their success when it comes to larger cars though have been a different story, with neither the Getz, Sonata Embera or Verna at the top of their category despite being pretty well-rounded cars.

Even as Hyundai Motor India is gearing up for the Verna relaunch, it is currently grabbing headlines with its recently launched premium hatchback model Hyundai i20. It is also mulling over the launch of a new face-lifted Sonata Embera before it launches the revamped Verna in India.

The company had recently reported an overall 55.7 per cent growth for December 2008. While domestic sales grew by 19.3 per cent, exports zoomed 96.8 per cent over the current month last year. The company said that its total sales for December 2008 stood at 38,402 units. The domestic market accounted for 15,602 units, compared to 13,078 units for the same month last year while the exports totaled 22,800 units in December 2008, against 11,586 units of December 2007.

Hyundai Motor India had by the end of 2008 posted cumulative sales of 37,320 units in the A2 Segment comprising Santro, i10, Getz and i20. Meanwhile in the A3 Segment comprising Accent and Verna, Hyundai sold 1078 units, while in the A5 segment (Sonata Embera) Hyundai could sell only 2 units. Hyundai’s SUV Tucson also managed to sell only two units.