15 hours ago
Tata Motors' Altroz make hatchbacks cool again? It's got a new look and more features
And when I drove the car a few days later in and around the hills north of Bengaluru, I appreciated this fact. Drive it like one would on a daily commute or even at normal highway speeds, and it is docile. And while some might want their vehicle to look big and burly on the road, the Altroz, with its hatchback form factor, does not. That said, when you want to have a bit of fun on tarmac, nothing beats a hatchback.
It is a question I asked Martin Uhlarik , Head of Design at Tata Motors Passenger Cars. He said that premium hatchbacks such as the Altroz are still a strong segment. This is backed up, to a certain degree, by the bestseller Maruti-Suzuki Baleno. He added that the hatchback buyer is a conservative creature. 'The easy ingress and egress from the Altroz, thanks to the doors that open wider than any other vehicle in the market, and the ease of driving, make this vehicle appealing to these buyers.'
In a ballroom at a Mumbai hotel, Tata Motors took the wraps off the refreshed Altroz hatchback. Like most cars nowadays, the new Altroz is filled to the brim with electronics, including a large touchscreen, different audio settings and ambient lights. But that doesn't make up for the fact that in the automotive world, it is all about SUVs nowadays, something that Tata Motors themselves know full well. Their own Punch, Nexon and Harrier SUVs are best-sellers. So why even bother with a hatchback?
I must admit that I was driving the variant of the car powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), and that is a bit less powerful than running on petrol, but I found a nice, twisty hill road with freshly laid tarmac, and the Altroz came to life. Because the car sits lower to the ground, it just takes corners better with next to no body roll. No matter how much one adjusts and tunes the suspension on an SUV, it doesn't give you that sense of pleasure of taking a hard corner that a hatchback can.
But the fact is that people prefer the SUV body style these days to tackle 'bad roads'. Although, I believe there is more of a psychological aspect to that—a need to look big on the roads. As I wrote last week, when roads get flooded, you can't really traverse through, SUV or not. I really hope the Altroz does well, because it really is better than its Tata stablemate, the Nexon.
Also read: EVs can take their own sweet time. I'm more excited about hybrids—Kia, MG to Hyundai
What a hatchback can do
Talking of hatchbacks, Volkswagen also just introduced the Golf GTI to India. This is the original 'Hot Hatch', a concept where one puts a very powerful engine in a small car. To be fair, the Golf, one of Europe's best-selling cars, isn't really small anymore. The current generation Golf is actually slightly longer than the Volkswagen Taigun. But with an engine that produces 261 brake horsepower, this is like no other car out there in India.
I had an opportunity to drive the Golf GTI at the National Automotive Test Tracks (NATRAX) at Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh and what a blast that was—you can watch a short video of my experience here. And the drive reminded me that only a hatchback can do certain things thanks to its shorter wheelbase. Even on the handling circuit at NATRAX, where there was no margin for error, the Golf GTI was taking the corners with aplomb. And when I took it to the high-speed oval at NATRAX, it just blasted down the track, allowing me to max the vehicle out at 267 kilometres per hour.
The Golf GTI isn't cheap, though. At Rs 53 lakh ex-showroom, it was a sad reminder that Volkswagen never brought the next-generation of the Polo to India, whose GT TSI model was the last affordable 'pocket rocket'. But that brings me back to the Altroz, Tata Motors did sell a souped-up 'Racer' variant of the car, and maybe, just maybe, the new-look Altroz could get such a variant to compete with the Hyundai i20 N-Line, the only performance-oriented affordable hatchback on the market.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
