Honda has just imported three units of the recently developed Brio Compact SUV to India for testing purposes from the company’s manufacturing plant in Thailand.
Well it seems like Honda has silently developed the compact SUV which is to lock horns in the ultra-competitive compact or entry-level SUV segment. Though we were aware of the fact that Honda’s sub-compact SUV will be built on the Brio platform on which the Amaze compact sedan and Mobilio MPV is also built, but the fact that the vehicle is already in its testing phase comes as a bit of a surprise because it is due for a launch in India towards the end of 2016. The company’s next utility vehicle launch in India will indeed be the upcoming Brio based compact SUV.
Three units of the Brio SUV which goes by the codename 2SJ have been imported to India from Thailand, for testing purposes. Honda will have to carry out quite a few changes to the platform itself because it is not actually meant to house a SUV body or even SUV-like characteristics in that case. Not only the platform, but the compact SUV is also expected to share a good amount of parts with other vehicles from the same stable. The vehicle is also expected to be longer than the 4 metre length mark, which in this case will take Honda to put in extra efforts to price it competitively in the market.
The compact SUV has been newly developed mainly for Asian markets and Honda will not be launching the Vezel SUV due to high costs in India. The Brio based SUV is set for an unveil at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show in October and we hope the design cues for the same are taken from the Vezel (which itself takes cues from the bigger CR-V) and not the Brio family for obvious reasons. It is expected to be powered by the known 1.5-litre i-DTEC diesel and 1.2-litre petrol engines. Additional details will only come to light when the compact SUV is unveiled to the world.
Source – Zauba.com
