Toyota will unveil small car concept at Auto Expo

Auto Expo will see a lot of concepts and announcements. One important car that everybody would be waiting for is the Toyota small car. The car will be shown as a concept at the auto expo with the real deal reaching showrooms in end 2010. Toyota has already made it clear that its car will not get into price war with competitors. It will come at a premium and that premium would be charged for the quality, which will rival more expensive saloons.

Toyota Kirloskar, the Indian arm will produce the hatchback and its sedan variant from December 2010 at its second plant in Bangalore. The compact car project is Toyota’s most ambitious venture in India in its 11-year existence and the company is betting big on this initiative to become a volume player. “Both hatchback and sedan version of concept vehicle of the compact car will be showcased at Auto Expo (to be held at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi from January 5 to 11)”, TKM deputy managing director Sandeep Singh said. “It’s a concept vehicle coming from Japan“. “Production will start by December of 2010. First year production plan is 70,000“, he said.

Toyota will also showcase its Prius hybrid at the Auto Expo and sales might start if the Prius we are going to display and you can say we are talking about launch of the Prius”, government announces excise cuts on hybrid cars.”Singh said. He said Prius is not a volume product and the company is just looking to sell just a few numbers. “We just want to impress upon the government to give some special concession on duty (for Prius). Otherwise, it does not make sense to pay such a high duty and sell it. It could be very expensive”, Singh said. “But we would like to sell a few numbers. We are impressing upon the government to give some concessions to hybrid vehicle”.

When asked about the price, he did not comment. Toyota India expects to sell 53,000 units this year, up from 51,800 last year on strong sales from the Fortuner SUV. Toyota achieved a 50% jump in sales in October 2009 to 5,650 units. Toyota unlike other new entrants has a strong dealer network in place which will aid the launch of its new small car. Toyota’s traditional rivals Nissan better get their act together or they might not have the reach needed to market what is essentially a very good car.