Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel clinches his first pole of the 2012 season at the controversy marred Bahrain GP, just ahead of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton. Mark Webber will start 3^rd followed by Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg. Force India’s Paul Di Resta claims 10^th while Hulkenberg starting 13^th on the grid.

Volkswagen speaks about the E-Bugster Blue-e-Motion concept, the sporty Beetle, at the 2012 Beijing Auto show. The Bugster will be a revised version of the concept revealed at Detroit Motor show, 2011.

 Audi Q5 gets a facelift for the 2013 model, to be launched at the Beijing Auto show. The SQ5 could be seen around at the Le-Mans 24 hour race in June.

 Hyundai India looks to export the Eon to African and South Asian markets to widen its customer base.

 The Hyundai i20 launched in Europe with a 1.1 liter “U-II” three cylinder diesel engine, with a state of art ‘Intelligent Stop and Go’ technology, delivers 37 km per liter.

 Renault Duster was spotted with almost no camouflage in Chennai. It seems like we can expect, the mid-size SUV to hit the markets soon.

 Swiss bike maker BMC has launched its Impec Lamborghini cycle in collaboration with the supercar marquee. Lamborghini engineers helped design and assemble the bikes.

Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL) has increased the production of the diesel variants of its bestsellers, the Verna and i20, by up to 50 per cent from today. Hyundai is expected to produce around 10,500 units of both diesel cars from the existing 7,000 units per month. HMIL has also increased sourcing of the diesel power-trains from South Korea to meet the increasing demand owing to the wide disparity in petrol and diesel prices.

HMIL director, Arvind Saxena expects the waiting period for the Verna to reduce to 2-3 months from the existing 6 months and for the new generation i20 to about a month. He said, “Our customers have shown great patience, waited for months. We owe it to them to deliver the cars earlier”. Hyundai is eyeing the unhappy waiting customer to eat into the market share of its competitors, by being able to sell cars off the shelf.

Hyundai had put the plans for the diesel engine plants on hold owing to the expected tax restructuring over diesel cars. After the 2012-13 budget has left the tax structure unchanged, Hyundai is said to be re-evaluating the situation. The new engine plant will help Hyundai cut the existing diesel variant costs and also ease the logistics burden on the supply chain. Hyundai can probably offer a 3-cylinder diesel in the i10 or the Eon at a lower price.

The i-Gen i20 now comes with a more powerful and refined 1.2 Kappa petrol engine with Dual VTVT mechanism that makes 84bhp of power. The 1.4 U2 CRDi diesel comes with 6-speed manual transmission that delivers 90bhp power. 

A number of first- in-segment features are available in the i-Gen i20 like Rear Parking Camera with display in the cabin mirror, Electro Chromic Mirror which offers anti-glare vision during night time driving, Clean Air-Cluster  ionizer for fresh air in the cabin, Auto Headlight Control Function, 6 Airbags, Rear Disc Brakes, Supervision Cluster and Rain Sensing Wipers.

It also offers  host of premium features like: Smart Key with Push Button Start, One Touch Triple Turn Signal, Leather Wrapped Steering Wheel and  Gear Shift Knob, Driver Seat Arm Rest, Electric Adjustable Folding and Heated Outside Mirrors, Tilt and Telescopic Steering, 60:40 Split Seat with cushion pop-up for optimum passenger and luggage space utilization, premium 2-DIN CD/MP3 Audio System with 4 speakers and 2 tweeters, USB, aux-in and Blue tooth connectivity along with Steering Mounted Audio and Bluetooth controls.    

Like all the other Hyundai cars in the Indian market, the new i-Gen i20 offers top priority to safety with features like: 6 Airbags, ABS, clutch lock system (to prevent accidental starts), smart pedal system (in the event of panic braking, the brake pedal overrides the accelerator), speed sensing auto door locking and impact sensing auto door unlocking (in the unfortunate event of a collision) and Reverse Parking Sensors.

Hyundai Motor India Ltd continued to grow with cumulative sales growing by 13.6% for the month of June, 2011.HMIL’s total sales for June, 2011 stood at 52,531 units as against 46,253 units in June, 2010 registering a cumulative growth of 13.6%. The domestic sales accounted for 30,402 units as against 27,366 units in June, 2010 registering growth of 11.1%  while the exports grew by 17.2% from 18,887 units in June, 2010 to 22,129 units in June, 2011.

Commenting on June, 2011 sales, Arvind Saxena, Director - Marketing and Sales, HMIL said, “The market continued to be slow but Hyundai sales have grown partially due to the success of New Verna. We have received over 21,000 customer bookings for the New Verna so far and we are trying to fulfill the demand.”

The segment-wise cumulative sales for the month of June, 2011 are as follows: A2 segment (Santro, i10, i20) 45,260 units; A3 Segment (Accent & Verna) 7,147 units; A5 segment (Sonata Transform) 24 units; Santa Fe (SUV) 100 units.

With their steady growth as regards domestic sales, the company has cut down on their exports drastically as they feel that the domestic market has a lot to offer. With the Hyundai WIA in place in Tamil Nadu, we look forward to a lot more cars from the Hyundai stable.