Volkswagen to begin production of compact sedan in India in 2016

The German carmaker’s yet unnamed sedan will make its global debut at the Delhi Auto Expo 2016. The first part of this investment saw them built their engine assembly plant, while the second part of the investment will now be utilized in building a new compact sedan.

Codenamed Volkswagen Polo Stuffe, the compact sedan will share platform with the Polo hatchback. “Additionally, we will continue to invest further in increasing our productivity and efficiency.” said Dr. Andreas Lauermann, President and Managing Director, Volkswagen India Private Limited.

Even though there have been no official announcements made by the company yet, there is a strong possibility that the upcoming compact sedan might feature the 1.2-liter three-cylinder naturally-aspirated MPI petrol engine and probably also the new 1.5-liter TDI four-cylinder diesel mill. It will be interesting to see if VW adds an automatic transmission variant to the new auto.

The investment will also cover installing new equipment and ramping up production in order to accommodate this new compact sedan.

With the latest investment in the new compact sedan, Volkswagen has now invested around Rs 5,500 crore in India at the Pune plant since it started its operations in 2007. When launched, this vehicle will compete with the Maruti Dzire, Honda Amaze, Hyundai Xcent, Tata Zest and Ford Figo.

Volkswagen is now struggling worldwide with the defeat device scandal as some 11 million cars from the group have been fitted the software that rigged the emission numbers.