It wasn’t long ago when Toyota announced eight new compact models for emerging markets. The Japanese automaker expects half of its sales to come from emerging markets in the next three years. Now India is one of the biggest emerging markets, where Toyota has not really found much success in the mass market. The Toyota Etios siblings are selling no where close to what the company expected. The Etios sedan is positioned against the Maruti Suzuki Swift DZire, Ford Fiesta Classic and Tata Indigo Manza. The DZire is difficult to beat, owing to a better rounded package than the Etios.
The Toyota Corolla Altis is doing decent numbers for the company, selling around 500 units every month. However the Corolla range starts at Rs. 12,53,845/- (petrol 1.8 J) while the top end Etios VX diesel is priced at Rs. 9,39,129/- (all prices on-road, Mumbai). There is more than Rs. 3 lakhs difference between the top end Etios and the base Corolla. If we take the difference between petrol or diesel variants, the difference goes to almost Rs. 4 lakhs. Thus Toyota is missing a huge opportunity in the upper end of the C-segment, which is dominated by the Hyundai Verna.
Thus Toyota has decided to bring in a model to fill in the gap between the Etios sedan and Corolla Altis. Toyota is still in the initial stages of deciding which model to bring in but most likely it will be the Vios. If Toyota does not bring in the Vios, it will have to develop a new model from scratch which will be time consuming. The Toyota Vios is itself quite outdated now and the next generation version should be launched in a years time. This particular model can be offered in India, competing against the Honda City. Power could come in from the same engine which do duty in the Etios, but with a slightly more power.
Toyota recently revised the Vios in Malaysia, back on the heels of Honda updating the City. The Vios is powered by a 1.5-litre VVT-i engine which produces 109 PS of power at 6000 RPM and 141 Nm of torque at 4200 RPM. The engine is mated to both manual and automatic transmissions. The Toyota Vios is sold in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. It was first launched in 2003 and is currently in its second generation, which was launched in 2007.
