Honda Thailand has revealed a second teaser picture of the Brio based sedan, which discloses more than a bit of the new vehicle. This sedan will be launched in India around March 2013 and will debut Honda’s diesel technology here.
Honda has been teasing the new sedan for a while – the image featured six vehicles with the last sedan in a silhouette with “1.2-litre” badging on it. This recent picture clearly tells us that the new car (codenamed Honda 2TP) is based on tried and tested formula of boot-on-hatch – seen in models like the Swift Dzire and the Indigo eCS.
The new Brio sedan will be a sub-four metre in length enabling Honda to avail excise concession and price it in competition with the Maruti Suzuki Dzire and Toyota Etios, Tata Indigo eCS and the Mahindra Verito CS. This also means that the diesel engine will be tweaked version of the four-cylinder 1.6-litre i-DTEC ‘Earth Dreams’ unit; with displacement of less than 1.5-litre to avail tax benefits.
Keeping in line with Honda Japan CEO Takanobu Ito's goals Honda India will also localise many of the components of the engine to keep costs down, allowing for a competitive price. Honda will be banking heavily on this model to revive its sales which fell drastically after the deregulation of petrol prices around a year ago.
Honda has time and again confirmed than none of the current models will get diesel engines. This means that we can expect refreshed versions of almost all models in the year and a half. The first of the new Honda cars will be the CR-V, which will be launched in January 2013 with petrol mill and may later get diesel option.
