FT-​​86 con­cept no more?

Accord­ing to a report in Auto­car, the FT-​​86 is being turned into yet another bland Toy­ota vehi­cle à la Camry.

The car’s focus is now aimed between 30 and 40 year olds, retains RWD, and will suf­fer in the per­for­mance depart­ment as Toy­ota seek to wring more fuel econ­omy out of the Sub­aru sourced boxer instead of performance.

Toy­ota are also expected to increase the price from around US$20,000 to US$23,000 for a base model, and going as high as US$26,000 for a spec’d up ver­sion. Toy­ota risks alien­at­ing younger, more per­for­mance ori­ented dri­vers with this move, as the com­pany has no sig­nif­i­cant sports vehicles.

Ed: Looks like Toy­ota doesn’t have the stones to make a new sports car, as we saw with the HT-​​FS. Nis­san (370), Mitsu (EVO), Subaru(WRX) and even Hyundai (Gen­e­sis) are fill­ing the gaps here, though not nec­es­sar­ily in the same price bracket.

Source: [Auto­car]

BASED ON THE NISSAN QAZANA, the Nis­san Juke is set to be unveiled at the upcom­ing Geneva Motor Show.

The Nis­san “Juke”

Clearly tak­ing on the cues of the quirky (that’s being diplo­matic) Qazana, the Dakar inspired Juke tones down the theme with slightly less com­i­cal wheel arches, but appears to retain the over­sized fog­lights and coupe-​​ish styling. Not much else is known, though full details will be released on Feb 10.

The car prob­a­bly won’t make it to North Amer­i­can or Aus­tralian mar­kets and will be pro­duced in the UK, no doubt aimed at the youth(and young at heart/​ just plain bizarre) market.

[Ed: I think Juke is a mis­pelling of Joke.]

PRESS RELEASE

7 Jan­u­ary 2010

JUKE: NISSAN’S NEW SMALL CROSSOVER

* Sales to begin in Autumn for Europe
* Extend­ing the Crossover phi­los­o­phy to the small car seg­ment
* Nissan’s fourth Crossover in Europe – rein­forc­ing Crossover lead­er­ship
* Man­u­fac­tured in UK

One month before its global media unveil on Feb­ru­ary 10th, Nis­san today con­firms the name of its forth­com­ing small Crossover. The Nis­san Juke will go on sale from Octo­ber, fol­low­ing its global pub­lic pre­mière at Geneva Motor Show in March.

The Nis­san Juke will inject some much-​​needed dynamism into the small car seg­ment, offer­ing Euro­pean car-​​buyers an alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tional, unin­spir­ing small hatch­back. As the fourth Crossover in Nissan’s Euro­pean range, “Juke” rein­forces the brand’s pio­neer­ing Crossover lead­er­ship in Europe.

The car was inspired by the Qazana con­cept car that received such a warm recep­tion at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, and will fit into the Nis­san range between the Note com­pact fam­ily car and the Qashqai crossover.

Nissan’s cus­tomer research iden­ti­fied a large pro­por­tion of Euro­pean small and com­pact car buy­ers whose needs are not met by what they per­ceive to be unin­spir­ing and uno­rig­i­nal options avail­able to them where copy­cat hatch­backs dominate.

The Nis­san Juke has been designed and devel­oped to give cus­tomers an alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tional small hatch­back in Europe. We know that there are a lot of cus­tomers that are look­ing for a car which com­bines strik­ing design, agile han­dling and dri­ving plea­sure, user friendly tech­nol­ogy but not at the expense of prac­ti­cal­ity and con­ve­nience. These unique attrib­utes will allow Juke to occupy a unique cor­ner of the Euro­pean mar­ket,” said Simon Thomas, Nissan’s Euro­pean Senior Vice Pres­i­dent for Sales and Marketing.

“Nis­san caught the mood of the Euro­pean car-​​buying pub­lic with Qashqai crossover and we’ve worked hard to study the mar­ket in the same way for Juke to be sure we meet the needs of Euro­pean cus­tomers. We’re con­fi­dent that Juke will bring a new gen­er­a­tion of cus­tomers to Nis­san, in the same way that Qashqai did. Our phi­los­o­phy of chal­leng­ing con­ven­tions with Qashqai has been a huge suc­cess. We’ve just reached the 500,000 land­mark and we’re apply­ing many of the lessons learned from Qashqai to Juke. We’re con­fi­dent we’ll have another suc­cess on our hands,” added Simon Thomas.

Juke will be man­u­fac­tured along­side the Qashqai, Qashqai+2 and Note at Nissan’s state-​​of-​​the-​​art man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­ity in Sun­der­land, Great Britain.

With the intro­duc­tion of Murano in the US in 2003, the Crossover con­cept was intro­duced to con­sumers who were look­ing for a vehi­cle that com­bined the dynamic design and han­dling char­ac­ter­is­tics of a pas­sen­ger car, but with the added ben­e­fit of all-​​wheel drive trac­tion and the improved vis­i­bil­ity of a raised seat­ing posi­tion, but with­out the boxy shape of an SUV.

In Europe, the intro­duc­tion in 2007 of Nissan’s Qashqai her­alded the main­stream intro­duc­tion of the Crossover con­cept for the first time, pro­vid­ing an alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tional C-​​Segment offer­ing. In just over two-​​and-​​a-​​half years, and with a half-​​a-​​million buy­ers in Europe, cus­tomer feed­back shows they love its com­bi­na­tion of under­stated, but sophis­ti­cated design which com­bines the lower body robust­ness of an SUV, but the upper body pro­file of a pas­sen­ger car. Such has been demand for Qashqai that pro­duc­tion was increased at the plant in Sun­der­land, UK, to meet sup­ply. The Qashqai con­cept was fol­lowed by the intro­duc­tion of the stretched wheel­base ver­sion, the Qashqai+2, offer­ing extra inte­rior space allow­ing the inclu­sion of a third row of fold­ing seats to meet the needs of larger active fam­i­lies who need extra space or accommodation.

Details of forth­com­ing refresh­ments to the Qashqai were released ear­lier in December.

Full details of Juke will be released on 10th Feb­ru­ary 2010.

HOT ON THE HEELS of Honda’s New Small Con­cept, Suzuki has thrown another small car con­tender into the boom­ing Indian com­pact seg­ment in the form of the R3 MPV concept.

The new con­cept is (as usual) sparse on details, but we could expect to see any one of Suzuki’s 1.2 or 1.4 litre engines, a Fiat 1.4 or even an offer­ing from the Volk­swa­gen sta­ble, which now owns a con­sid­er­able stake.

Given Maruti’s 50% mar­ket stake in India, the vehi­cle is expected to do well within the coun­try, but may also find it’s way to Europe.

Maruit Suzuki R3 MPV Concept

PRESS RELEASE

Suzuki Announces Exhibits for Auto Expo 2010 in New Delhi

Suzuki Motor Cor­po­ra­tion is pleased to announce that its Indian auto­mo­bile pro­duc­tion sub­sidiary, Maruti Suzuki India, will be exhibit­ing the fol­low­ing vehi­cles at Auto Expo 2010 in New Delhi (to be held from 5 to 11 Jan­u­ary 2010*):
Con­cept model: R3

The Indian mar­ket is chang­ing rapidly and con­sumer lifestyles evolv­ing fast.
To cater to one such mar­ket need, Maruti Suzuki has devel­oped a con­cept car, R3.
The Con­cept R3 model is a Com­pact Multi Pur­pose Vehi­cle (MPV) for such peo­ple.
Designed by Maruti Suzuki India’s Research and Devel­op­ment Depart­ment, it com­bines com­pact dimen­sions with a styl­ish pro­fil­ing.
The Con­cept com­pact MPV accom­mo­dates six peo­ple in three rows.
Ref­er­ence exhibits (eco-​​vehicles): SX4 Hybrid and Eeco Elec­tric Vehicle

Maruti Suzuki India is tak­ing part in an Indian gov­ern­ment project that pro­motes hybrid and elec­tric vehi­cles.
It will be exhibit­ing two pro­to­type vehi­cles that Maruti Suzuki has devel­oped for the project: the SX4 Hybrid and the Eeco (Every+) Elec­tric Vehi­cle.
Pro­duc­tion mod­els and other ref­er­ence exhibits

Maruti Suzuki India will be show­ing 16 other auto­mo­biles includ­ing ten pro­duc­tion mod­els (13 units in total) and two ref­er­ence exhibits: the Kiza­shi and SX4 Hatch­back (three units in total).

Maruti Suzuki pavil­ion will also be high­light­ing Suzuki’s two-​​wheel lead­er­ship by show­ing nine motor­cy­cles: the Hayabusa, Intruder, and other large mod­els; the Thai-​​produced Sky­drive 125 scooter; and the Burgman Fuel Cell Scooter, which was last seen at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show.