Mumbai: Hyundai Motor India Ltd today relaunched the original tall boy Hyundai Santro, four years after it phased out its most popular car. Online bookings for the 2018 Hyundai Santro start Wednesday at ₹ 11,000 for the first 50,000 customers as an introductory offer.
According to Hyundai Motor India managing director Y.K. Koo, the company is expecting around 50,000 bookings for the new Santro before it is officially launched. “The brand Santro has huge value in the Indian market and customers have fond memories of the vehicle. So now when Hyundai is again launching a family hatchback, we have decided to bring back the brand,” said Koo.
The new Santro, which will sit between the Hyundai Eon and Hyundai Grand i10, is expected to be priced between ₹ 3.5 lakh and ₹ 4.5 lakh. The car will be available in showrooms before Diwali.
Much of the new Santro’s development was done at Hyundai Motor India’s research and development facility in Hyderabad—in tandem with development centres abroad. The car will be manufactured only in India and will be exported to emerging and developed markets.
Hyundai is looking at monthly sales of 8,000 to 10,000 units, with the automatic manual transmission (AMT) variant contributing a large chunk.
“We are launching this car with our in-house AMT technology. We are expecting almost 40% of the total sales in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru,” Koo said.
The relaunch of the Santro also indicates that building a brand in India is increasingly becoming tough in the domestic automobile market. Santro was the first car launched by Hyundai Motor India in 1998 and it was phased out in 2014.