2011 Hyundai Santa Fe Automatic launched at a price tag of Rs. 24.36 lakh
Hyundai India has just given its flagship SUV a shot in the arm to turn around tepid sales. No, it isn’t a price cut we’re talking about. Instead, what the Hyundai Santa Fe SUV gets is an automatic six speed gearbox. The Hyundai Santa Fe Automatic is priced at INR 24.36 Lakhs, Ex-Showroom Delhi, a price which will put it once again in sniffing range of the BMW X1 Crossover’s entry level variants and that isn’t exactly a good thing.
The Hyundai Santa Fe Crossover arrives into India as a completely built unit and this is one of the reason for the high price of this SUV. The Santa Fe’s automatic variant comes at a time when Toyota has already begun testing the automatic version of the best selling Fortuner in the market. Hence, with the Santa Fe Automatic, Hyundai India will be hoping to capture some of the Fortuner’s market share before the automatic version of the Fortuner is launched in India.
The Santa Fe’s six speed automatic gearbox will transmit the 2.2 Liter Gamma CRDI turbo diesel engine’s 197 Bhp of peak power and the gargantuan 430 Nm of peak torque. Apart from the automatic transmission, two other major changes on the Santa Fe Automatic is the addition of a push button start and a a new smart key. These changes apart, the seven seater Santa Fe remains bog standard to the manual transmission variant.
While the automatic version of the Santa Fe will no doubt add to this SUV’s monthly numbers quite significantly, what Hyundai India really needs to do to make the Santa Fe a worthy competitor of the Fortuner is, begin assembling the Santa Fe in India through completely knocked down(CKD) kits. If this happens, the Santa Fe could be priced quite competitively. Meanwhile, the Santa Fe Automatic could be the last of the imported models of the Santa Fe before the facelifted fluidic model of the Santa Fe arrives.
ChopShop Source : indiancarsbikes.in
