Maruti Suzuki Ignis to Be Launched in 2016 Festive Season?

The Maruti Suzuki Ignis compact crossover will be launched in India during the festive season of 2016, according to reports. The Suzuki Ignis, that falls under the micro SUV category, made its debut last month at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show.

The car was first showcased as the Suzuki iM-4 concept at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show. When launched in India, the Maruti Suzuki Ignis will rival cars like the Mahindra S101, Tata Nexon, and Datsun GO-Cross.

The car was first showcased as the Suzuki iM-4 concept at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show. When launched in India, the Maruti Suzuki Ignis will rival cars like the Mahindra S101, Tata Nexon, and Datsun GO-Cross.

Suzuki says the Ignis has "a compact, visually striking body... and a simple, highly practical interior design highlight its credentials in the compact crossover genre."

The Maruti Suzuki Ignis features certain attributes of an SUV, like good ground clearance and a high view point. In terms of design, the micro SUV gets a comparatively large single-slat grille with integrated projector head-lamps and chrome surround, and flared wheel-arches. The Ignis is 3679mm long, 1579mm high and 1478mm wide.

As for the powertrain, the Japanese version of the Ignis gets a 1.2-litre DualJet petrol engine with SHVS (Smart Hybrid Vehicle by Suzuki) technology, and is paired to a CVT automatic gearbox. While a front-wheel drive layout is standard, all-wheel drive (Suzuki ALLGRIP) is optional, at least for the Japanese market. It remains to be seen whether India will also get these variants. However, it's almost a certainty that a diesel engine option, likely to be the familiar 1.3-liter DDiS mill, and manual transmission (for both petrol and diesel) will be available in the country.

http://auto.ndtv.com/news/maruti-suzuki-ignis-to-be-launched-in-2016-festive-season-1245649

Why India’s Pre-Owned Luxury Car Market Will Boom in 2015

In December last year, Mercedes-Benz opened its first pre-owned luxury car showroom in India under the name of “Mercedes-Benz Certified”.
Looking at the tremendous growth in the industry largely dominated by unorganised trade, Mercedes-Benz became the third luxury car manufacturer in India to open a showroom for used cars. The used car market in India is growing and luxury cars contribute to around three percent of the total sales. This means that their number stands at somewhere between 28,000 to 32,000 units per year.
Moreover, by the looks of it, this rate is expected to increase this year. Here’s why.
Increasing Prices of New Cars
Consumers want to get a taste of luxury but premium cars don’t come cheap in India owing to heavy excise duty and high rate of interests. As Eberhard Kern, CEO of Mercedes-Benz India once said, “In many car products (in India), over 50 percent of price is the taxes, which is unacceptable on the global level”.
The Government reduced the excise duty on cars and automobile parts last year. Consequently, the car prices dropped for a few months before the concession was removed by the Ministry of Finance at the beginning of 2015. This came as a setback to the luxury automobile companies and they responded by hiking their prices.
BMW increased its prices by 5 per cent, while also discontinuing some its models like the 116i Prestige and the powerful six-cylinder 328i. Since the start of 2013, the company has been focusing on the deep pocket customers. As a result, their sales have dropped but the profits have increased by 10 times. Mercedes-Benz and Audi also increased their rates. Hence, many consumers may just prefer buying a well-maintained pre-owned luxury car than shell out extravagant sums for a new one.
High depreciation and good value for money
The value of luxury cars depreciates by up to 30 per cent in just six months. In about three to four years, well-maintained luxury cars are sold for one-third of their original price. One can buy a BMW 3-Series or a Mercedes C-Class for just INR 1.5 million. They won’t have done much mileage and will be about three to four years old.
Most luxury cars are not used for daily driving, so they are in good condition and their quality is assured as they are built with better materials than the mass segment cars.
One realtor in Mumbai recently purchased a Lamborghini Gallardo, which had only done 3,000 kilometers for INR 25 million. A new one would have cost him INR 35 million. New cars are for the rich, while used cars are for the smart and prudent.
Growing supply
It’s really easy to find a used luxury car in India as owners tend to change their cars within two to three years of purchase. There are certified and unauthorised car dealers all across the country. In many cases individual sellers take it to themselves to sell the car.
Websites like Carwale.com, OLX.in, Cartrade.com and Quikr.com help the buyers to find potential sellers. At present, Carwale.com alone has advertisements for 821 BMWs, 868 Mercedes-Benzes, 582 Audis, 75 Jaguars, 5 Ferraris, 74 Porsches, four Rolls Royces and 20 Bentleys. That’s a remarkable number for one website in India.
Organised players have also entered the industry. BMW, Audi, Mercedes all have showrooms for second-hand luxury cars now. Mahindra’s First Choice is another popular choice, while Big Boy Toyz, a company which primarily deals in “exotic cars” has a remarkable presence in the Indian market. The company reportedly sells around 80 cars annually.
Entry of organised players
Companies offer warranty, financial schemes and service plans on second hand cars that dealers and individual sellers can not.
In 2011, BMW launched “BMW Premium Collection” showrooms, catering the German automaker to “many new customers” in the country. Cars undergo a comprehensive check and are sold with a BMW warranty.
Audi has its own showrooms for pre-owned luxury cars which shelters automobiles from other brands as well (like Mercedes, BMW and Porsche). Here too, cars undergo a complete inspection before they are sold. The customers are “are assured of a transparent and hassle-free experience of buying and selling pre-owned vehicles”. Big Boy Toyz even offer a buy-back agreement on cars to potential customers.
These companies demand a slightly higher price for the cars (than an individual seller or dealer), but they ensure a low cost of maintenance and less financial and legal hassles. Such services were not available in India till two years back.
Completely built-up units
Buying a used car works well in case of brands like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Porsche and Aston Martin, among others. Such cars are imported as Completely Built-up Units (CBU’s) in India and hence a 100 per cent excise duty is paid on them. Consumers are reluctant to fork out so much money.
More than 100 such exotic cars have changed hands in India over the past two to three years. They have low mileage, are well-maintained and the buyers save up to 40 to 50 per cent on their purchase. Moreover, sellers get 10 to 20 per cent higher price for their cars.
The ones who really benefit are those who bought imported luxury cars a few years back when 60 per cent excise tax had to be paid.
According to The Economic Times, a Mumbai businessman bought a Lamborghini Gallardo for INR 2.9 crore a few years back. In a “normal course after depreciation”, the value of the car in 2014 should have dropped to INR 1.74 crore, but he could got INR 2.51 crore from a buyer.
“I had sparsely used the vehicle for 1,400-1,500 kms and I got to know about the new Huracan and that seemed an interesting buy,” he said.
“So, I sold off my Gallardo…It has been an advantage for anyone who bought a CBU around 2011-12 at older custom duty. I am very satisfied with the price I got.”.

http://www.gtspirit.com/2015/03/15/why-indias-pre-owned-luxury-car-market-will-boom-in-2015/

Smart ForTwo (2015) review

Innovation is rarely cheap, but for such a small car, the Smart ForTwo has been a mind-bendingly expensive good idea. An exact figure has never been publicly disclosed, but this little tub of a thing has lost Daimler many billions since it launched the first one in 1998.
So it would have been easy for the board to lose their bottle and pull the plug, but whatever the cost of development and production it always felt like a car that modern, chaotic, cramped urban life needed. Now, with this new model, Daimler hopes to have turned the corner.
Click here for our first news and photos of the 2015 Smart Fortwo.

Smart ForTwo review: is the new one better?

More refined, better built and even more able to nip its occupants into gaps with maddening smugness, the ForTwo is effectively a cut-and-shut new ForFour or Renault Twingo, which is where a lot of the development cost has been subsumed, by using the same three-cylinder engine configurations and similar underpinnings.
The ForTwo’s styling is less cute than before though, having grown from its iconic one-box design into a more conventional ‘one-and-a-half box’ silhouette, necessitated by its lineage to the larger cars and the need for better crash protection.
In fact, the bulbous features make it look as though it has been wrapped in one of those ugly rubber cases you can get for iPhones. Handy when accidentally nudging into hard things, but a less endearing aesthetic for it.

Fortwo specs, dimensions… it’s still a tiny city car

The track and overall width is 100mm wider than previously but the car’s overall length remains the same. In the cabin the extra space, and the better use of it, is apparent. Driver and passenger do not have to be intimately engaged to feel comfortable next to each other any more, thanks to more generous shoulder room, while it is a notably classier place from which to swear at bus drivers.
The utilitarian plastic knobs and hard surfaces have been replaced with nicely detailed and trimmed oblong sliders and soft-touch surfaces with LED backlighting. Even the doors shut with a thump now rather than clang, like a real car.
Two improvements to the driving experience are immediately noticeable: the ride quality is vastly better and so is the gearbox. The suspension deals with sharp impacts far more compliantly than before, due to increased spring travel and deeper tyre sidewalls, although you would never call it a soft car. And that short wheelbase means the car still bonks as one entity over bigger obstacles such as speed bumps.
Also, nearly all the cars at launch featured the new five-speed manual (using a Renault Megane gearknob, if parts-bin spotting is your game) but a couple of pre-production autos were on hand to help prove it’s not going to be as bad as before.
In the old car, that curmudgeonly gearbox became less crotchety with age, but the new twin- clutch unit is much smoother from the outset. And a Smart feels like a car suited to a good auto transmission – just stick your foot down and whizz into gaps with no delay.

The Smart’s natural habitat: urban roads

In town, neither the 70bhp naturally aspirated nor the 88bhp turbocharged three-cylinder petrol engine get a chance to show off their limited performance, but both feel sprightly enough to allow plenty of lane-swapping cheek, even if they aren’t going to win any light-to-light drag races. As you might expect, the ForTwo changes direction fairly sharply, feeling nicely secure as it does so thanks to its four-square stance. The Twingo and ForFour, and the previous ForTwo, have turning circles a pole dancer would be proud of, but this ForTwo makes them all seem lumbering, finding itself pointing the way it came in a space of less than seven metres.
There are three trim levels. All sound like retail park nightclub chains; passion, prime and proxy. Other trendy offerings include an app with which latte-grabbing anarchists who’ve found an odd space into which to cram a Smart can take pics and post their locations for other Smarties to use.

Verdict

Over the years, with 1.6 million sold, the ForTwo has become a staple of urban life alongside mad tramps and filthy pigeons, and created a successful subculture all of its own among owners. With this iteration it might finally make Daimler some money too.

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/Smart-ForTwo-2015-review/