Volkswagen hasn’t been able to crack the Indian car market as the company lags in sales compared to most established rivals. The German automaker has very good products on offer in the Polo and Vento but the competition is very stiff and value for money is the mantra for success. To boost value and lure buyers to the brand by playing the safety card, Volkswagen has announced that dual front airbags will be standard across the complete Polo range. This means even the base Trendline will come with front airbags as standard. The company has made ABS standard on the mid level Comfortline variant.
There is no free lunch and thus the Polo with dual airbags sees a price hike. Volkswagen will increase prices of the Polo and Vento by 1% with effect from 1st February. This translates to the Polo becoming dearer by Rs. 22,700/- while the Vento will now cost an additional Rs. 26,800/-. The price hike has been initiated due to the increase in input costs and the fluctuating exchange rate. Volkswagen is the first automobile company in India to offer dual front airbags as standard across the range in the hatchback segment.
It’s good to see Volkswagen offering safety features as standard. Such a move was first seen from Nissan which offers driver side airbag as standard in all trims of the Micra. The Japanese company also offers ABS as standard on all variants of the Evalia. Looking at this move, we expect Maruti Suzuki, which sells the most number of cars in the country, to also consider improving the safety of its products. Maruti Suzuki doesn’t even offer top variants of many of its cars, like the Celerio’s AMT version doesn’t get a ZXi trim.
