Skoda India has launched the Laura vRS at a price of Rs. 15.49 lakhs ex showroom Delhi. The car will come only with a turbo charged petrol engine and is meant for petrol heads who like their cars to be at the sharp end of things. The car will also sport sixteen inch sporty alloy wheels. It comes with a 6 speed manual transmission and a 1.8 litre TSi engine.
Yearly Archives: 2011
Pictures from the brochure of the facelifted Honda City have been leaked and are all over the web space. It is well known that the City has made a strong comeback in the last month to trounce all its rivals in sales and Honda seems to have decided to keep the interest of the people in the City alive with some changes which are purely cosmetic but enhance the visual effect of the car. Here are the pictures.
The internet is full of stories about Fiat not introducing any new model in India during the calender year 2012. Earlier there were rumours about Fiat bringing a brand new small car to India and most auto websites believed that the said car will be the Fiat Panda to take on the Wagon R from the Maruti stables. Now the news is that next year will only see face lifts to the Punto and the Linea and that Fiat will concentrate on setting up its own exclusive dealer network.
Autocar India.com has reported that the Range Rover Evoque will be launched in the Indian car bazaar by the end of the current calender year. It will be offered in both three door and five door formats says Autocar India. The three door will be offered only in the top of the line Dynamic trim level while the five door will be offered in three variants, Pure, Prestige and Dynamic. Power will be of 237 PS for the three door Dynamic and will come from a turbo petrol engine 2.0 litre capacity. The five door will get power from a 2.2 litre common rail turbo diesel and will put out 187 PS. Both models are likely to all wheel drive models.
Mr. Michael Boneham the head honcho of Ford India has revealed that the focus of Ford will be on production of small and hatchback cars since that is where the true potential of the Indian market lay. The success of the Figo has encouraged Ford to go in for more such cars and most of the eight new models that Ford has committed for India by 2015 will fall into this segment.
Nissan has launched the Sunny in India with a petrol option only with prices starting at Rs. 5.78 lakhs ex showroom Delhi for the XE variant and Rs. 6.88 lakhs for the XL variant and Rs. 7.68 lakhs for the top end XV model. Diesel options are likely to be available from January, 2012 onward. The Sunny is the second car built on the V or versatile platform, after the Micra. At the launch Nissan officials have said that India is an important market for Nissan and that by 2015 three more cars would be launched. No details about the segment and prices of the cars were given. The Sunny though in the Ford Fiesta, Hyundai Verna and Honda City segment is extremely spacious and can give bigger cars such as the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla Altis and even the Skoda Laura a run for their money in terms of the interior space.
Factory Yamaha rider and defending MotoGP champion Jorge Lorenzo has all but conceded his title for this year to Repsol Honda rider Casey Stoner who is leading by 44 points from Lorenzo with just four more rounds to go. Lorenzo has said that the only way he can successfully defend his title only if something goes wrong for Stoner and that he did not wish that to happen. He also said that a number is just a sticker on the front fairing. Now we wonder why everybody fights to get that sticker on their bike?
Narain Karthikeyan is poised to drive the HRT Formula1 car on this Friday ahead of the Singapore Formula1 GP as practice for the full drive that he is going to get for the Airtel Formula1 GP of India in October. The contract that Narain Karthikeyan has with HRT already has a provision for this because one of the main sponsors of HRT are TATA Motors. In addition the newly formed entity Hero MotoCorp (erstwhile Hero Honda) has also agreed to sponsor Narain for the Indian Formula1 Grand Prix. It will be good to see the first ever Indian F1 driver driving at the first ever F1 Grand Prix of India.
It seems most German fans want Michael Schumacher to retire at the end of the 2011 season and not see out his contract with Mercedes GP till the end of the 2012 season. They believe that his cause is now hopeless since the Mercedes GP car while being powerful and fast in a straight line (as was demonstrated at Monza when Schumacher was able to keep a DRS and KERS using Lewis Hamilton from overtaking him on the long straight) the car is not looking like a winner. Most German fans believe that there will be no great improvement in Schumacher’s performance next year and they want him to retire and stop embarrassing himself and his fans.
The whole thing now seems to be getting to Valentino Rossi. With his ill fated move to Ducati continuing him to bring him grief Rossi is ready to try things to rectify the situation. What seems to hurt Rossi more than his not winning or being on the podium is the constant comparison with arch rival Casey Stoner whose position he took at Ducati. Casey Stoner won the majority of races for Ducati and won the marque’s so far one and only World Championship in 2007. Stoner is doing everything to demoralize Rossi by saying things like how Ducati would not listen to his demands beyond a point and tell him to get on with it and how he is surprised at the amount of money that Ducati are willing to spend on the demands Rossi is making. But the sting lies in his very tongue in cheek sympathy towards Rossi when he said that he is mystified by how Rossi despite all this is not finding speed and that his talent deserves more than what he is getting out of Ducati.
Rossi has started a beleaguered defence of himself saying that Stoner was smaller in size and therefore he could get better speed out of the Ducati even on a straight line than he himself is able to get. He now says he is open even to trying a new riding position to suit the bike. It looks as if Ducati will build a aluminium twin spar frame for the Ducati of 2012. It is well known that Ducati does not have the experience of building such a frame and is likely to give it out to FTR to build for them. If even after that Rossi cannot find speed, his MotoGP career would be over for all practical purposes without wins and podiums.