Fiat has suspended the production of the performance variants of the Punto and the Avventura for a brief period.
Fiat has suspended the production of the performance variants of the Punto and the Avventura for a brief period. The production of the Abarth Punto and the Avventura, powered by Abarth have been paused at the Italian company’s Ranjangaon factory to make preparations to accommodate Jeep upcoming’s C-SUV.
The new Jeep C-SUV is currently under development and will be launched at the Sao Paulo Motor Show in November this year. It will replace the Compass SUV and will be manufactured at the Pernambuco plant in Brazil and at the Indian plant. While the Brazilian plant will manufacture only LHD cars, the Indian plan will manufacture only the RHD car. Fiat has invested $280 million on its Indian plant for the production of the SUV.
The new SUV will get a petrol engine as well as a diesel heart. The diesel engine is expected to be a 2.0-litre Multijet II engine that will be manufactured at the Ranjangaon factory. Styling wise, it will look like a downsized Grand Cherokee and will be bigger than the Renegade SUV. It will come German SUVs rivalling quality levels but will cost around INR 20 lakhs. The new Jeep SUV should arrive in India sometime next year.
The Abarth Punto is powered by a 1.4-litre four cylinder turbocharged petrol engine producing 145 bhp at 5,500 rpm and 212 Nm of torque at 2,000 rpm. The engine is mated to a 5-speed manual transmission and power is sent to the front wheels. The car accelerates from a standstill to a 100 kmph in 8.8 seconds and it returns 16.3 kms to a litre of fuel. India’s first hot hatchback has been priced at INR 9.95 lakhs (ex-showroom, New Delhi) and it competes with the Volkswagen Polo GT TSI.
Source – Rush lane