Honda Cars India Limited (HCIL), the completely owned domestic arm of Japan-based Honda Motor Company, has announced its intentions to introduce an automatic model of its small car, Brio in the Indian auto market by mid-October this year. Following this, rumours regarding the launch of Brio diesel are also on fire; however no confirmations are made by the company yet.
On this move of auto maker, industry experts believe that HCIL should concentrate over launching the diesel run model of Brio, rather than introducing the automatic petrol version of the same. It is quite evident that the exorbitant petrol prices have affected the sales of petrol models in almost every segment of the Indian auto industry, but still Honda wants to add a new petrol model in its portfolio. However, industry experts said that the automatic transmission models of small cars are still in a swing, owing to the added convenience that they have to offer against their manual counterparts.
Analysts believe that the Japanese car maker will offer the automatic transmission model in its basic and mid-level variant as the incorporation of automatic gearbox in top-of-the line model will take its price fairly high. Post launch, the car will efficiently square off against the likes of Maruti Suzuki A-Star Automatic and Hyundai i10 Automatic, which are the only options for cost-effective automatic hatchbacks in the small car segment.
Reportedly, the addition of a new model in the company's Indian product portfolio will be somewhere around festive season and is believed to be quite lucrative for Honda. However, no declarations have been made on the technical grounds of the new model and thus, auto aficionados have to wait a little since launch of the upcoming model is around the corner.
