Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover to develop a full-fledged SUV
Tata Motors and their acquired subsidiary, Jaguar Land Rover collaboratively are working on developing a full-fledged SUV that could be priced at Rs. 20-25 lakh. This vehicle will be pitted against the likes of Hyundai Santa Fe, Toyota Fortuner and Ford Endeavour. Codenamed as Q5, the seven seater SUV will come by 2016-17, and will certainly mark its presence once it arrives in the market.
The project is being waited on the grounds of approval over commercial viability parameters, and once it passes that, it will be built using platform of Land Rover's current generation Freelander 2 and also on JLR's recent innovation done on developing premium products which could suit the Indian market conditions.
Commenting on this, a senior Tata Motors executive said, “ We are exploring new options with JLR, one of them being the Q5 and the other is a common engine option. There is a continous dialogue with JLR on processes and engineering inputs for our existing products.”
Tata Motors, in particular caters the mass market while JLR stands at the luxury end products in the automobille market, so the collaboration seem pretty difficult. But, this could also help Tata Motors improve its brand image in the market by implementing several premium JLR development techniques and well-renowned British technology in making of future vehicles.
Source: Economic Times