Hyundai Motor India ships out i20 to Europe
Hyundai Motor India has rolled out from its Irrungattukottai plant the first batch of all new i20 cars, premiered at the Paris Motor Show last month. The maiden consignment, comprising 2,820 cars, has just been flagged off from the Chennai port for Europe.
i20 is considered a highly significant addition to the new generation of Hyundai vehicles identified by the `i` prefix. It is designed at Hyundai`s European design centre at Russelsheim in Germany. It is designed and engineered to meet the European tastes and needs. The i20 cars exclusively manufactured at the India facility of HMIL.
HMIL makes i20 in three variants - 1.2 litre, 1.4 litre and 1.6 litre - in both petrol and diesel versions. The first export consignment comprises a good mixture of these.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, H.S. Leem, Managing Director, said HMIL could launch i20 in the domestic market sometime in January next. Fielding a range of questions, he said HMIL initially was targeting to export 6,000 units of i20s by November.
The global financial melt-down in its wake had seen some distributors cancel their orders and still others postpone their buys. This had forced HMIL to make lower initial shipment, he pointed out. Export shipments would pick-up in the coming days in the wake of Christmas-eve orders, he pointed out. Mr. Leem said HMIL had fixed an export target of 120,000 nos for i20s next year.
HMIL was hoping to sell 15,000 i20s in the domestic market next year. He admitted that the global melt-down would hit 25 per cent of export sales of HMIL. Nevertheless, he asserted that Hyundai's thrust on small cars should keep his organization in good stead in a crisis situation like the one the world was through now, where the accent was more on cost and fuel efficiency.
[Via: Newspaper]