Hyundai Santro ready to make a come-back on Indian roads

• A crowd favourite, the Hyundai Santro, is making its comeback in the Indian automobile market today with pre-bookings going live.
• The car will be priced aggressively to take on the likes of the Tata Tiago and the Maruti Suzuki Celerio.
  
• With the booking amount currently ₹111,000, the starting price of the car is expected to be around ₹400,000.

After being out of production for three years, Hyundai has announced that the Santro is making its comeback today as pre-booking open before its official launch on 23 October. It will have both, an automatic and a manual option, along with different models for petrol and CNG.

In fact, the AMT gearbox will be making its debut in India in Santro’s Magna and Sportz variants but unfortunately, won’t be an option if you opt for on any of the Asta or CNG variants. It’s actually going to be a pretty high tech for a budget car with a 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system built in featuring Android Auto as well as Apple CarPlay, a reverse camera, defogger and segment-first rear AC vents.

Facing its competitors

When the Hyundai Santro launched back in 1998, it was able to take on the Tata Indica, Daewoo Matiz and Maruti Suzuki WagonR. But in today’s market, the hatchback will be facing off against the likes of the Maruti Suzuki Celerio and the Tata Tiago.

While the Tata Tiago is the only car in the segment that offers a diesel option and is the most fuel efficient, the Santro wins out over both in terms of bells-and-whistles. That isn’t all that surprising, since Hyundai is known to offer top of the line features.

That being said, it should concern Hyundai that one of Santro’s unique selling points in the past was how compact the car was. If not a little too compact, at times. While the Santro may ‘look’ smaller than its counterparts with respect to its length, but it’s at par, if not in excess, when it comes to width and height.

It’s no secret that Hyundai has plans of pricing the car quite aggressively to capitalise on India’s budget consumers, and it’s currently speculated that prices will start at around ₹400,000 with the down payment currently on the site coming to ₹111,000.