Tata Motors launches first compact SUV, Nexon, at ₹5.85 lakh

Tata Motors introduced Nexon, its first compact sports utility vehicle offering, on Thursday. With prices starting at ₹5.85 lakh for petrol and ₹6.85 lakh for diesel variants, the company has pitted the model against the Maruti Suzuki Brezza, Ford Ecosport and Mahindra TUV 300.

Prices of the Brezza diesel start from ₹7.27 lakh. It doesn’t have a petrol variant.

Powered by a 1.2-litre turbocharged petrol engine and 1.5-litre diesel engine, the Nexon goes on sale from Thursday.

“The Nexon is aimed to address the ever evolving needs of the customers,” Guenter Butschek, managing director and chief executive at Tata Motors, said at the launch.

“With this product we expect to come within the larger consideration set of buyers,” said Mayank Pareek, president, passenger vehicle business unit. We are quite confident, it will become a blockbuster product,” he said.

Puneet Gupta, associate vicepresident at IHS Markit, a sales forecast and market research firm, said it’s a “make or break product for Tata Motors”.

With the Tigor and Hexa not really setting the sales chart on fire, Tata Motors now has all its hopes pinned on the Nexon in a segment where its absence has been rather pronounced, he said.

What bodes well for Tata Motors is the fact that unlike the compact car and compact sedan segments, where it sells the aforementioned models, the compact SUV segment is not that crowded and buyers have few options.

Also, at a time when consumer buying preference is steadily shifting to petrol models, Nexon has an advantage over the Brezza as the latter is not offering a petrol version just as yet, while the Nexon is available in both petrol and diesel.