Tata Motors are eyeing to capture segment leader Maruti Swift’s market share with the new Bolt that comes with a plethora of new features and will undercut the competition in terms of pricing.
Rivaling the Maruti Swift, Volkswagen Polo, Hyundai Grand i10, Nissan Micra and the likes in the segment, the Tata Bolt certainly has the potential to create ripples in the premium hatchback space and Tata Motors is making sure to ready up the model with countless hours of testing. Spied in Chennai earlier this month, our eagle eyed Rishath Suresh captured the new Bolt while on one of its test runs in the city wearing camouflage. A major test for Tata after the success of the Zest compact sedan, the Bolt definitely seems promising.
Sharing its underpinnings with the Zest, the new Tata Bolt will be feature packed complete with the Harman infotainment system, Bluetooth connectivity, smart voice integration, advanced smartphone integration with phone enabled navigation and much more. You also get dual front airbags, ABS and cornering stability feature as part of standard kit on the top-end variants. A quick recap on the powertrain, the hatchback gets the newly developed 1.2-litre turbocharged Revotron petrol engine producing 85 PS and 140 Nm of torque, while the 1.3-litre Quadrajet diesel produces 75 PS and 190 Nm of torque. Both the engines come paired to a 5-speed manual gearbox as standard, while the AMT has been given a miss, at least initially.
The Tata Bolt also looks good in flesh in terms of appearance and wins over the Maruti Swift in terms of cabin space. The model offers ample space at the front and rear seats, while the top-end trims gets projector headlamps and LED DRLs, which the competition misses out on. The other added bonus is the 3 different driving modes namely City, Eco and Sport on the petrol version, something unheard of in the segment. However, the Swift was updated earlier this week and now pretty much comes with all the essential creature comforts as well as frugal petrol and diesel engine options. The facelift is only expected to further increase its popularity, despite the marginal increase in prices.
We drove the Tata Zest earlier this year and were pretty impressed by the vast improvements the Indian automaker managed to make on the car. With a similar expectation on the Bolt, the hatchback will be targeted at the peppy and younger crowd as opposed to the corporate and family folks that the compact sedan attracts. Coming to the pricing, if the Zest was anything to go by, Tata will play its ace card with the Bolt as well and is sure to undercut the competition by a significant margin. With Tata still trying to regain the lost momentum in the Indian auto segment, will the Bolt turn out to be the company’s redeemer? The answer comes only next year as the launch is scheduled for January.
