After new Koleos, Fluence and Duster AWD, Renault has shifted its focus to an all-new launch for India – the Lodgy. The French automaker was clicked testing their upcoming 7 seater MPV in Chennai, the city where their factory is based, in collaboration with their alliance partner Nissan.
The Lodgy, essentially another rebadged Dacia product, shall be in the market soon, possibly within the coming three months. These new spy pictures, clicked by an Indian Autos Blog reader, reveal a new test mule with an interesting camouflage under tests. The car should be at the end of its testing regime and must be running almost the finalized product for our market.
A few days back, Renault India has officially announced the launch of Lodgy MPV in India and also shared a pic of the car. Though it doesn’t win any beauty contests, but Lodgy looks different than both Ertiga and Mobilio, two of its chief rivals in India.
Non-integrated (on ORVMs) side blinkers and basic design without too many flashy points, hint at the possibility of Renault planning an aggressive price tag to this car, which they should! Lodgy also scores in terms of dimensions. Not only is it broader than the competition but is also longer and we expect these bigger dimensions to translate into better space on the interiors.
Duster, their most successful product so far, is a fantastic car by all standards, however, it clearly doesn’t score well in terms of its interiors. The Lodgy, which is expected to be sharing parts with the compact SUV to keep costs under check, may end up carrying the same drab interior look.
Powering the Lodgy will be the same 1.5L dCi engine which can be seen doing duty in a lot of Renault-Nissan alliance cars. The Lodgy can be expected to get the 85PS tune for all regular variants and a possible introduction of the 110PS engine on a sporty/higher variant.
When it comes to external appearances, Lodgy is pretty much the same as the international version but gets a chrome job and black plastic on the under lip to make it look slightly more Indianized! It will also get a different set of alloy wheels.
The Lodgy will have a lot on its shoulders. It is expected to replicate the success of the Duster and power the falling sales of the company. But it will really be difficult considering that, unlike Duster, Lodgy will have to face at least two of the already established rivals in the segment.
With not really-luring looks and big USPs, we suggest Renault to launch the MPV at some shocker prices to create that much needed initial wave!
Related: Renault Planning a Bigger 7-seater Duster for 2016
