“We are definitely hitting the Hyundai Creta and Kia Seltos”

Says Jürgen Stackmann, board member, sales and marketing, VW passenger cars

“It’s based on the MQB-A0 platform that has compact cars tailored to the platform by the Skoda teams for the Indian market. We knew from the first day that without a deep understanding of what can be done locally we would be struggling. The car has a different design on the sides to make it bigger and it’s targeting the Creta. It’s slightly smaller than the Creta, but the relative size from the outside package to the inside package, we can easily compete with the Creta.

“With 95 per cent localisation we could enable to make it much more accessible, and that’s a huge opportunity. The car is going to be manufactured here, the 1.0 TSI, we have basically done everything with local suppliers, but that does not mean we are compromising on any quality.

“The high-tech diesel technology is being squeezed out of small cars. It’s great technology but people don’t want to pay for it.

“We are not dreaming. Our vision is 3 per cent [market share]. [It is] sustainable for us, our partners, our suppliers and for our customers and we are not aiming for 20 per cent.

“The car that you see on the stand will go to Mexico in a fresh segment.

“Positioning [against the Skoda Vision IN] will be same in terms of pricing. It depends on your product strategy, so you go for either the more equipped vehicle or you go for more price point. Definitely we at Volkswagen have our sportiness with the GT series, so we are going to put emphasis on this. There will not be a big difference in terms of pricing, so both brands have to find a different positioning. They [Skoda] cater to the affordable luxury type of positioning, whereas we want top of volume, that is our clear position.

“TSI is Volkswagen and this will always be Volkswagen; people know this.”