Reference Auto

Ashok Leyland, which is mainly into heavy vehicles like trucks and buses along with other commercial vehicles, is foraying into passenger cars but with the segment having little space and with too many players vying for a place, the Stile’s sales could stagnate after a short while. 

The Stile is based on the Nissan Evalia and compared to the latter the eight-seater Stile comes with a few refurbishments, which can only be termed ‘cosmetic’, and include new headlamps, a fresh grille along with green and blue stickers. The looks are somewhat bulky and the Stile multi-purpose vehicle or MPV seems to be a tad big for city roads.

The Stile is priced at Rs 7.5 lakh and the pricing is pretty aggressive even as sales aren’t expected to hit the roof in the category.

The new vehicle, which is similar to Nissan’s MUV Evalia, targets commercial users who use passenger cars as ambulances, taxis or courier vans.

But like the Evalia, Ashok Leyland’s Stile will be propelled by Nissan’s 1.5 litre dCi diesel engine, which is mated with a five-speed manual gearbox and offers 85 PS power and 200 Nm torque.  

The current Stile is a diesel variant (which is ideal for an MPV) but the company is also contemplating rolling out a petrol car. 

This plan (of launching a petrol model) would be a futile exercise as even a diesel MPV could see lukewarm response in India. 

So, may be Ashok Leyland has to either shelve its plans of a petrol model of the Stile or it has to shelve the car soon after its launch. Unless the petrol model breaks the price barrier (on the lower side though)! After all, a petrol model would sell less in a category (MPV) where sales are not too encouraging.

So far as plans on the petrol variant go, Ashok Leyland will offer a CNG kit with this version in a bid to boost operational cost of the car so as to see that it does not gather dust. But the CNG tank would severely eat into the legroom inside the car, which would have otherwise been spacious.    

The Stile is likely to be available before the festive season (around October) and would be manufactured at Nissan’s unit in Oragadam near Chennai.

“With the Stile MPV, Ashok Leyland is foraying into a new vehicle segment and our confidence with the new vehicle stems from our confidence in the strength of our combined teams in Nissan and Ashok Leyland,” said chairman of Ashok Leyland Dheeraj G Hinduja.

So, with too many auto majors jostling for space in the MPV passenger car segment, the swanky-looking Stile may lose steam in the middle term of may be two years.