The Indian duo of Tata Motors and Mahindra have been fighting it out in the Indian automotive marketplace ever since. In the process, both the companies have landed up in developing vehicles which compete with each other, the Bolero-Sumo, Safari-Scorpio and now the Aria-XUV500 being prime the prime duels. What is interesting to know is, with each of these models, it was Tata Motors who had the first mover advantage but it was Mahindra who had the last laugh. Tata Motors launched the Aria with enthusiasm and much fanfare only to see their party being gate crashed with the launch of Mahindra’s XUV500, which received more bookings in a week, than the Aria had received in its full existence since its launch early this year.
Now, as part of its recovery plans for the Aria, Tata Motors plans to launch an automatic variant, which was spotted by a reader of my blog “www.anything-on-wheels.blogspot.com” in Pune. This ‘On Test’ Aria that was spotted at Pimpri had no badges or external touches to distinguish itself from its manual counterpart but the reader claims to have seen the interior of the vehicle. The Aria Automatic will be the very first auto-box from Tata Motors and we can assume significant help from Jaguar and Land Rover would have played a key role in the development of the AT version. The Aria Automatic will cost slightly more than the manual variants and Tata Motors needs to revise the prices quickly in order to ensure the Aria Automatic is a success.
