Car News Update

Hyundai has introduced the CNG version of the Accent. It seems like a bid to prolong the models life and improve sales. This has led to the increase in price of the car by about 56,000 rupees. So that takes the price of the car to around 5.55lakh ex-showroom. Right in the ball park of the diesel sedans from the competitors, but you will save on running costs (CNG prices were reduced to around 18.60 rupees per kilo).

Tata will be introducing their latest acquisitions, Jaguar and Land Rover by next year. The stunning new XF is most likely to make it to our shores. From the Land Rover stables the baby rover, Freelander looks an obvious choice. Although Jaguar has no dealer in the country, Mumbai based Navneet Motors have been selling the Range Rover and the Range Rover Sport for a while now. All the models are most likely to come in as CBUs.

Staying with Tata Motors, the Nano which is going through testing and a trial production run right now will be out by October and the dealers will start bookings by mid September. Incidentally the Nano will be produced not at one, not at two but at three different units to minimize the distribution costs.

In other news, Maruti Suzuki India has upstaged its parent company yet again. This time though it is not in terms of units produced but by being named the fourth most reputed auto manufacture in the world ahead of Suzuki Japan in the "Global 200: The World's Best Corporate Reputations" list, compiled by US-based Reputation Institute. It is also ahead of BMW at fifth and Daimler AG at sixth. In the overall list, Maruti is 77th and Suzuki Japan is at 139.