This Toyota car comes back! Swift, Baleno, i20, all will be ruined…
Small cars i.e. hatchbacks are quite popular in India. Companies like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Tata Motors offer excellent hatchback cars. Talking about Toyota, its premium hatchback is Glanza. This is actually the Toyota version of the Maruti Suzuki Baleno. Baleno and Glanza are the same car, the only difference is in the name of the company. It is not that Toyota is limited to Glanza only. One of its hatchbacks was quite popular till a few years ago, whose name is Toyota Etios.
If Toyota Etios makes a comeback in India today, then the game of many small cars can be spoiled. Maruti Suzuki will face the most problems because this company sells the most small cars. Recently it has also launched a new model of Maruti Swift. Tata and Hyundai will also be in danger from Etios.
The Etios was first launched in India in 2010 as a sedan. A hatchback version was also introduced in 2011, while the Etios Cross was launched in 2014. You might be surprised to know that in 2019, the Etios hatchback was only the second made-in-India car to receive a 4-star safety rating in the Global NCAP crash test.
That's why sales of Etios stopped.
New emission norms were to be implemented in 2020. Toyota would have had to spend a lot of money to update the Etios as per these norms. Therefore, its sale was discontinued in 2020. The hatchback was powered by a 1.2-litre petrol and a 1.4-litre diesel engine.
In 2020, the ex-showroom price of the Etios hatchback was Rs 6.48-8.94 lakh. If this car returns to India, it will compete with cars like Maruti Swift, Baleno, Hyundai i20, and Tata Altroz.