Fiat Avventura vs Toyota Etios Cross

The Urban Cross was first showcased early this year at the Auto Expo, where it sported large built in LEDs and bezel around the headlamps. The production version, however, has skimped on this, and instead, it gets conventional Punto Evo headlights. There is a large stylish grille that helps set it apart along with new roof rails. Furthermore, the 17-inch wheels from the show have made way for 16-inch alloys.

It’s a crossover… It’s a hatchback… No, we don’t know! And since we don’t have a name for this segment of cars, we are going to begin by christening them Hatchovers! The Etios Cross is the latest entrant to this India-specific segment, where the cars look rugged and bulky like crossovers, but offer pretty much the same utility as that of a hatchback. It may be a unique distinction for the Indian automotive market, but not something that we should be proud of. What exactly is the purpose of the hatchover then? What made manufacturers like Volkswagen, Skoda and Toyota enter this segment? Is it just a passing fad or will we see more vehicles of this kind in future? We spend some time with the Etios Cross to get to the bottom of this riddle.

The fast evolving Indian automobile market has spun out some interesting innovations. While few of them are an interesting work-around the absurd tax system, like the sub-four metre sedans, others are just cosmetic changes to take advantage of the market trends, like the hatchback-based crossovers. The Volkswagen Cross Polo and the Toyota Etios Cross fall in this category of pseudo UVs that offer the same value as their hatchback counterpart, with the addition of just beefier and rugged styling.