The speculation has ended. It is official now. Hyundai Motor India, the second largest car producer in the country, is launching a diesel variant of its popular car Getz Prime.

The new car will be available with Hyundai dealers within two weeks, just at the beginning of the festive season.
Getz Prime Diesel will be fitted with a 1.5 litre common rail direct injection (CRDi) engine that will deliver 110 BHP of power at 4000 rpm. Talking to Deccan Herald,  Hyundai Motor India Vice President (Marketing & Sales) Arvind Saxena, said “We will be importing the CRDi engines from South Korea. They are the finest in the class.”
With the launch of diesel, Hyundai’s Getz Prime will come in three engines: 1.1 litre petrol, 1.3 litre petrol and 1.5 litre diesel.   What will be price of Getz Diesel?  Mr Saxena is tight lipped but indicated that it will be more than Maruti Suzuki’s hugely popular car Swift Diesel (1.3 litre CRDi) whose ex-showroom price in Bangalore is around Rs 5.25 lakh.

Another compact
Industry watchers believe that Hyundai will launch Getz Diesel at around Rs 6 lakh. Meanwhile, Hyundai is also preparing for the launch of another compact car, now code named PA, by the end of 2007. This petrol car is being developed entirely for the Indian market first and will be launched in other countries later.  “This is a completely new car in the entire world of Hyundai” affirms Mr Saxena. PA will be placed in between Santro and Getz in terms of price positioning. With this the company will have three models of compact cars: Santro, PA and Getz. Since seventy per cent of the car market is now occupied by compacts, we are very bullish on the growth of this segment.

Hyundai India’s new launches will happen around the time when its new plant is goes on stream next month. With its present capacity of 300,000 cars (in three shifts) Hyundai in 2007 is aiming to produce around 325,000 cars — exports accounting for 125,000 cars. Since the company is adding a new plant of the same capacity at the present location (near Chennai), Hyundai’s total car production capacity in India will jump to 600,000 cars. No wonder, the company is planning to manufacture and sell 500,000 cars in 2008, a jump of 54 per cent over its 2007 sales.