What the government’s ruling of sub 4 meter cars has done is, give manufacturers ideas which they would have never thought and we would not have witnessed otherwise!
The extreme case of this ruling, we have seen, is the Ambassador CS! Anyways, coming to the point, Autocar has just revealed what we thought will never be possible! They say, Volkswagen has confirmed that they are developing a shorter version of their smart sedan, Vento. How small? Needless, to say, Smaller than 4 meters, to qualify for the tag of ‘Small car‘ in India.
According to Indian Excise rules, cars which are under 4 meters in length and have engine capacity of less than 1.2L for Petrol and 1.5L for diesel qualify for the lowest 12% excise duties. If a car breaches this, the next slab is exactly the double at 24% and depending upon various conditions it keeps on increasing.
This speculation from Autocar is really surprising considering the following points:
- The smaller sibling Polo is already 3970mm in length, just shy of that 4000mm mark!
- At 1.6L both petrol and diesel engines of the Vento breach that small car conditions. Does Autocar mean that Volkswagen will use Polo’s current underpowered 3-pot engines? We request VW, if that is the plan, to scrap the project right away! Or will VW use or bring other/newer engines? TSI anyone?
Now, comes the third and most important pointer! Autocar says, Volkswagen is planning to launch this smaller Vento before 2014. From all what our English teacher taught us in prepositions, that means within this year 2013. Autocar is attributing this revelation to Ulrich Hackenberg who is the R&D chief at Volkswagen.
If this story bears any bit of reality, Vento CS (our habit of calling every sub 4 meter sedan!) will be the car to watch out for along with Honda’s Amaze.
Also Read: Mahindra Verito CS Caught Testing
Source: AutoCar
3 thoughts on “SCOOP: VW to Join The Sub 4 Meter Race With a Smaller Vento!”