India's largest automobile manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki is planning to launch the company's entry-level sports utility vehicle, Jimny in the country by the year-end.
"Apart from the Swift launch this month, Maruti Suzuki is also planning to launch the Jimny in the country before end of the current year," company sources said.
Earlier, Maruti Suzuki executives had announced that the company will launch a vehicle that would be priced between its existing economy-SUV, Gypsy and the premium-SUV, Grand Vitara.
In the overseas markets, Jimny is sold with 1.3 litre petrol engine that produces 85 bhp of power. The company is expected to bring the same engine to India. Incidentally, cars including the Swift and the Esteem, which is being sold in India, shares the same engine.
The car comes with ABS and airbags as standard in the overseas market, but the company may introduce the car here without the features to keep costs at the minimum and to price it competitively.
The company could also introduce the car with 1.3 litre multi-jet diesel engine, where the car will then fall under the small car definition as defined by the Union Budget as it will have an engine capacity less than 1500cc and length of the car will be less than four meters.
The same engine will be seen on the yet-to-be launched Swift diesel.
Industry experts believe that the car to be priced around Rs 600,000 to Rs 800,000, which will then place it in direct competition with Mahindra and Mahindra's base Scorpio and Ford's Fusion.
The car will a part Maruti's international plan of launching atleast one new product every year, in the next five years.
Meanwhile, domestic sales for the month of December of the company grew by 26.33 per cent, with the total sales of 54,640 units.
For the nine months period of April to December, total sales stood at 449,730 units thereby registering a growth of 18.11 per cent as compared to the previous year.
