Volkswagen planning to run over Honda City

Volkswagen, the German car major is having plans to run over Honda's dominance in the premium mid-size segment by getting its own executive sedan onto the rolls by the second half of the year 2010. Honda has been the segment leader since the past few years with its premium sedan Honda City, that had been clocking average annual sales of 4000 units monthly. The new Volkwagen sedan would be named as Vento and would be directly hitting on Honda City. The platform used for this luxury sedan would be the same as Volkswagen Polo, the hatchback launched in February 2010. The launch of Vento is expected to grow Volkswagen's presence across the Indian automobile market and would also help achieve a significant brand value.

The company officials are keeping tight lipped at the expected launch date and price tag of the model, however industry sources suggest that it would be priced in the range of 9-10 Lakhs. It would surely give tough competition to Honda city that starts at Rs 8.59 lakh for the base variant, with the fully loaded automatic variant costing Rs 11.04 lakh (ex-showroom, Mumbai).

The designing of Volkswagen Vento have been totally based on Honda City's patterns and it would intelligently target this premium mid-size segment as it offers the least competition in India.

Although Honda's dominance over this luxury car market would be difficult to crack, but, one point that Volkswagen would score higher on is the availability of a Diesel variant as against the Petrol variants in Honda Cars. With Indian automobile market really cost-sensitive with expensive fuel prices, this would certainly give a high to Volkswagen Vento.

Senior official from the Volkswagen Group, Neeraj garg, Director Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Group Sales India, recently said that they would offer the same competitiveness they had offered during the launch of Volkswagen Polo, the premium hatchback launched this year in the month of February.

The production of Volkswagen Vento would be at the company's new factory at Chakan, near pune in India. This is the same plant that manufacturers Polo and Skoda Fabia. Volkswagen Polo available at Rs 4.45 in India suffers from limited localisation capabilities. The same would be the issue with Vento as the major car costing parts like the engine and transmission would have to be imported.

Apart from Honda City other cars in this premium segment that Vento would have to compete against are Chevrolet Optra Magnum, Toyota Corolla Altis and Mitsubishi Lancer.

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