Pal's blog

Kia is burning the markets across with its crisp design and user-friendly technology that comes in abundance in its yet-to-debut Seltos SUV.

India's preference to SUV is known that has only perpetuated by crowded availability. Seltos comes with a fresh breath somehow close to its sibling Hyundai Creta debut in July 2016.

Even as you are going through this story, an automotive dealership somewhere across India would be closing down its shutters, and the situation has been so scary that more than 500 outlets have gone out of business in the past few months.

Times have not changed for the Italian-American venture -Fiat Chrysler India- with its latest foray of storied Jeep brand of SUV not able to capitalist on the stupendous shift to such sporty vehicles in India and continues to reel under the distorted Fiat legacy.

SUV are precious. At least for Indian customers with all choices cornering around the iconic Toyota Fortuner, they weren’t really spoilt for choices.

It is difficult to believe that the future is ‘electric’, but anything else. I mean transport. It will not be the government push or the will of the people that will mitigate the change, but ‘Pure Economics’.

There has been no cheers for the automotive industry where even the high festivities of Dhanteras, when buying metal in considered auspicious failed to revive consumer sentiments and sales remained slow across ll major markets.

It’s nostalgic to recall the launch of Santro in India. The supercute tall boy hatch that not just changed the fortunes of a relatively unknown Korean carmaker, Hyundai Motor, wayback in 1998, but also established it as the most consistent and revered brand in the fast growing Indian market.

After a decade of operations, Nissan Motor, Japanese automotive behemoth is looking at changing its fortunes with perhaps some clear and a straight strategy.

Not exactly something it did in the past of rebadged and offering frugally-engineered vehicles that lost sheen to even much inferior rivals like Maruti Suzuki or Tata Motors, its new moves might be prudent after a decade of rejection and dejection.

Is India turning out to be a big market for automatic cars. Quite Literally!

Customer’s driving automatics cars have doubled in the past five years and the sales are gushing at a rapid pace across India. So much so, that smaller hatchbacks and compact cars are coming closer to their bigger siblings like sedan and SUV’s on automatic gear shift and weaning customers away from tardy manual gears.