Fiat to launch a new small car in India by 2011

Fiat India, a joint venture between Italy based Fiat Group and Tata Motors, today announced that it is going to launch a new small car in India by year 2011. According to Rajeev kapoor, the Fiat India Automobiles president and chief executive officer, “We are working on a small car which will be launched either by end of next year or early 2012.

The small car will possibly be launched in the competitive price range of Rs 3 to 3.5 lakh as the competition in this segment has become very tough as it contains a large number of vehicles including Chevrolet Beat, Ford Figo, Maruti Wagon R and Volkswagen Polo.

“We are essentially a small car player which we tried to change with Linea but our strength is still in small . That will work in our favour when we introduce the small car which will be a benchmark car for Fiat, said Mr Kapoor. It is expected that this new small car model will be having similar features like Fiat 500 model including safety, storage, emission control, entertainment. Fiat 500 model has been sold in India as a completely built unit which costs around Rs 15 lakh. The company managed to sell 64 units of this model in the country since its launch in India in year 2008.

Company is also in the process of launching a new Linea with a high-power 1.4 turbo charged gasoline engine by the month of June this year. Fiat India is also planning to launch Fiat Punto with a gasoline-CNG engine that automatically shifts between using liquid fuel and compressed natural gas depending on requirement.