Maruti’s Manesar plant which has production capacity of 5.5 lakh units a year suffered a major setback in July when violence broke out, triggering a month long shutdown. While it’s steadily recovering, the contract based manufacturer for Nissan, announced the spawning of Nissan Pixo with 10,000 cars likely to be rolled out within this year.
The Pixo trundled to the launch pad purely because Nissan wished to capitalise on an 11 per cent growth in the city-car market but can’t afford to build its own model back in 2009 in the UK. The base variant was sold for £6,000, far cheaper, as it was sourced from Maurti – basically an A-Star with a plastic surgery.
On June this year, number of small revisions were made to the entry-level model, especially the tweaked engine lowered CO2 emissions resulting in free of tax for the 5-door, four-seater hatchback. But now the product from Manesar plant will get an improved interior with new paint jobs and start-stop ignition technology to make the Pixo more fuel-efficient.
It possess a 1.0-litre petrol-only engine that powers out 68 ps mated to a 5-speed manual and 4-speed automatic gearbox. Since the equipment levels are very low it is sensationally priced well.
This will help Maruti an awful lot as the export slumped by a considerable margin in the opening half of 2012. The Pixo will be shipped to Europe and the alliance has a long-time commitment in rebadging the small car to meet the stringent emission norms prevail in the UK and across Europe.