Have you ever imagined how would look a Fiat Stilo sedan? Or a Honda Civic pick-up? Even though the 1990s tried to change that, the truth is it’s very hard to see a project coming in too many variations, like the first Renault Mégane and Chevrolet Corsa. The first Dacia Logan came even as a pick-up, but surprised everyone by leaving the hatchback to the Brazilian Renault, which resulted in Sandero. But five years later, who could’ve ever imagined all those countered expectations would find their closure on an Indian release?
Some months ago, this very blog stated that some car lines invest on exclusive identities for each of their siblings, while others prefer to offer basically the same vehicle in different bodies. That article also commented that even at the latter case’s examples there have to be some design differentiations in order to create better-looking vehicles, but sometimes it results so difficult to deal with the costs that some cars need to “forget” subjective aspects like that. Logan’s arrival in India was performed under Renault’s badge but helped by the local automaker Mahindra, resulting on the car’s first right-hand-drive adaptation. Even though that joint-venture was finished some years ago, the Indian company kept the car’s production rights for that market. The sedan was rebadged Verito and manage to keep acceptable sales, but this price range always demands both hatchback and sedan, at least. Since Mahindra couldn’t bring Sandero and projecting a new car would be too expensive at the moment, the Indian market is now receiving what everyone expected in 2004, at the original Dacia Logan’s release: being a true low-cost vehicle designed with such well-divided volumes made it much easy to imagine that its hatchback sibling would be created by nothing more than chopping the sedan tail off.
Verito hatchback and sedan are the exact same car from the front fascia to the cabin’s end, but Vibe tried to come up with a more creative rear. It’s nice to observe the exclusive bumper and trunk lid do follow the original style, but those elevated tail lights aren’t only creative: can you see how they continue the roof rack’s distance from the car’s roof and windshield? That was Mahindra’s witty way of keeping the sedan’s glass and “disguise” the fact that it makes the rear shorter at the center than at the edges – such solution brings the problem that the trunk lid opens only the metallic part, leaving the glass immovable. Leaving the design illusions, however, shows once again Logan’s excellent internal space, combined to nice equipment lists for this category’s standards (ABS brakes, climate control, driver’s airbag, fog lights, hydraulic steering and alloy wheels) and even some exclusivities, such as LED tail lights. The interior was completely shared with Verito sedan, and so was the powertrain. The new hatchback will only bring Renault’s four-cylinder 1.5L dCi, paired to a five-speed manual transmission. Verito Vibe is expected to arrive with competitive prices because it’ll use India’s tax incentive to low-cost vehicles according to the size, which gives smaller fees to cars with under 13.1 ft of length.
