Honda Siel Cars India (HSCI) on Thursday launched a refreshed premium hatchback, ‘Jazz', priced lower than its existing model at Rs 5.5 lakh to Rs 6.06 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The existing Jazz, which was launched in 2009, is priced between Rs 7.12 lakh and Rs 7.56 lakh.
This new A2 segment Jazz, powered by a 1.2 litre petrol engine, gives a mileage of 16.7 kmpl.
“Honda Brio, which starts production next month, will bring considerable economies of scope and scale to our operations as Jazz and Brio use the same engine. Combined with our supply chain efficiencies, R&D and manufacturing efficiencies, this will considerably bring down cost,” said Mr Jnaneswar Sen, Senior Vice-President (Sales and Marketing), HSCI.
“The new Jazz is 76 per cent localised. With Brio, our localisation level will be over 80 per cent,” he added.
At present, the company utilises 60 per cent of the 100,000 cars capacity of its Noida plant.
“We faced severe supply-side crunch owing to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Till the last financial year, we were selling nearly 500 Jazz cars per month. But the figure almost halved during April-June 2011, owing to the crises,” said Mr Sen. He hoped to get back to the original sales number in the next three months.
The new Jazz has three variants and is available in five different colours. It will be sold across 80 cities and 120 dealerships. The other cars in the segment include Maruti Swift, Hyundai i20, Volkswagen Polo and Skoda Fabia.