Yes, that’s true, according to Autocar India, who revealed that Wolfsburg has identified two models from the Maruti Suzuki range that it wants to rebadge as their own. The magazine’s sources said that Maruti, Volkswagen and Skoda India officials looked at the possibility of putting a VW badge on the A-star (Suzuki Alto to us) and a Skoda emblem on the high roofed WagonR in a meeting.
If you don’t already see the connection, let us connect the dots. Last December, Volkswagen bought 19.9% of Suzuki for US$2.5 billion to start “a comprehensive partnership” with the small car expert. It is without doubt that Suzuki’s huge presence in India – where there’s plenty of scope for growth and Maruti Suzuki holds close to 50% market share – made it an attractive proposition to VW, which has dreams of surpassing Toyota as the world’s top carmaker.
When they announced the deal, VW and Suzuki said they were “focused on achieving synergies in the areas of rapidly growing emerging markets as well as in the development and manufacturing of innovative and environmentally friendly compact cars.”
Autocar India further said that high level cooperation between VW and Suzuki has already begun and an organisation structure has been put in place for regular interactions between teams from Wolfsburg and Hamamatsu to work together. The Germans want the rebadging exercise to start ASAP, targeting for the “new” A-star and WagonR to be in showrooms as early as 2012.
There won’t be a unique dashboard or sheetmetal, just new lights, bumpers and grilles, which means that the Euro badged cars will still look very much like the Suzuki originals. Would the differentiation come under the hood then? Maruti doesn’t have its own diesel engines and currently purchases them from Fiat, but it’s argued that it will be cheaper to continue doing so, even after factoring in license fees, as the Multi-jet is highly localised.
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look like kancil..
to be honest, i saw kancil in all small car…
Interesting, interesting.
Will this news meet with the same hostility in this blog as the one about proton-mitsubishi lancer one? We’ll see…. we’ll see…. ;-)
Let’s heat things up a bit…
they say by rebadging Proton is going backwards, has no identity, has no creativity, bla bla bla….
So we say,by rebadging VW is also going backwards, has no identity, has no creativity, bla bla bla….
ahaha, vw tarak kene bash pun. kalau proton tu…
calling for mr sy0h to give his honest opinion *
very interesting idea…..will there be a Suzuki-rebadged Polo, Golf or Jetta soon??
So the VW will be a Suzuki with a Fiat engine? Talk about mixed parentage!
Wow..now Suzuki Alto owners in Malaysia can ditch Suzuki with Volkswagen emblem to upgrade their image :P
so unlucky VW dont buy Proton previously……..if not we’ll be driving VW Neo, VW Persona, VW Waja………….
wrong …. if VW buy Proton …. we might be driving Proton Golf …. hw nice
As if…
No VW bashers around? I beginning to see the mentality of proton bashers…
I was gonna bash VW for rebadging cheap car but then seeing that VW have their own very extensive product range and that this is for the budget Indian market, I changed my mind.
now all cars maker company do this rebadging, but why P1 cannot do?
VW already has golf, polo,passat,touareg,tiguan,Beetle,sharan,eos,passat cc,phaeton,jetta,scirocco… and introduced TSI,FSI,DSG…Many models to maintain in their production lines, So rebadge is one of the solution to introduce small and relative cheap car in India/3rd world country with VW brand.nowaday, nothing wrong with rebadge.proton also can rebadge VW if they get an opportunity. But here, only Proton, perodua,naza, inokom can rebadge the car and sell it slightly less than original brand. And sometimes, rebadge car in Msia mean “downgrade”.
everybody loves vw and they can do no wrong. everything they touch turns to gold. as for other brands…
And the fun fact: the Wagon-R is badged and sold as Opel/Vauxhall in Europe… so all over the world, we’d see the same car as Suzuki, Opel, Vauxhall AND VW…?
why suzuki alto assembly in india and then vw gonna rebadge it as vw a-star alto? not clash with current maruti alto ka?? what basher gonna say it?
So now we know DRB Hicom will CKDed this ‘new’ VW model.
What a shame!! VW just downgrade their brand! I’m bashing VW
i think they are desperately want to sale their car in India..
The a-star hardly sells in India because of the absence of any room in the rear.
and the boot can barely contain the spare wheel. leave aside anything else.
so even rebadged as a VW it wont sell because the height of an average indian is 5 feet 8 inches, and not 4 feet 8 inches
family car in india means a young adult with his parents and not a young adult with his children.