Last year Honda officially announced that they will launch a compact SUV in India and following that they showcased the fantastic looking Vezel (also known as HR-V) to the world. There were immediate expectations of it making to our small world but responding to many media queries, Honda officially quashed it for our market citing ‘high cost’ as the main reason. In place, they confirmed a Brio-based compact SUV for India.
Last year at the 2014 Auto Expo they showcased Vision XS-1 Compact SUV concept which looked futuristically interesting (featured below). In an exclusive interview with MotorBash, Jnaneshwar Sen said there is no relation of XS-1 with the Brio-based SUV, however, we still have our reservations and believe that the upcoming compact SUV will/may just be the production version of XS-1.
You can read the interview here
And now a year later, it appears that we are inching closer to the product. Honda has imported at least 3 units of ‘Brio SUV’ into India and the car has possibly been codenamed as ‘2SJ’. Zauba.com also reveals that, there are a lot of other parts of 2SJ that have been imported over the last few months. The car import has been from Thailand whereas the part import also includes Indonesia and Japan and all of them have a common landing point – Delhi! The import value of Brio SUV has been evaluated at around Rs 4.5 Lakhs each.
Like Amaze and Mobilio, 2SJ will be based on the Brio platform and an earlier report hints at the possibility of it being a 7-seater. It is not confirmed but in all probability, it will NOT be a sub 4 meter car and instead will gun for the Duster and others in this segment. In terms of engines, the 1.5 liter i-DTEC is a surety also along with the 1.5 liter i-VTECT petrol. Also notice in the import data above that there is a CVT box being talked about on the 1.5 liter motor, most probably the petrol!
Also Read: Honda Facing the Heat? Mobilio Gets Offers of Rs 51,000; First Time Ever!
Official unveiling can very well be expected at the 2016 Auto Expo and a launch thereafter is very much on the cards… Game on Honda!!!
