Mumbai: Tata Motors Ltd on Thursday launched the Tata Nexon, its first compact SUV offering, on Thursday. With prices starting at Rs5.85 lakh for petrol and Rs6.85 lakh for diesel variants, the Mumbai-based firm has pitted the Tata Nexon against the Maruti Suzuki Brezza, Ford Ecosport and Mahindra TUV 300. Prices of the Vitara Brezza diesel start from Rs7.27 lakh. It doesn’t have a petrol variant.

Powered by a 1.2-litre turbocharged petrol engine and 1.5-litre diesel engine, the Tata Nexon goes on sale from Thursday.

“The Nexon is aimed to address the ever evolving needs of the customers," Guenter Butschek, managing director and chief executive at Tata Motors, said at the launch. “With this product we expect to come within the larger consideration set of buyers," said Mayank Pareek, president passenger vehicle business unit. We are quite confident, it will become a blockbuster product," he said.

Puneet Gupta, associate vice-president at IHS Markit, a sales forecast and market research firm, said the Tata Nexon a “make or break product for Tata Motors". With the Tigor and Hexa not really setting the sales chart on fire, Tata Motors now has all its hopes pinned on the Nexon in a segment where its absence has been rather pronounced, he added.

What bodes well for Tata Motors is the fact that unlike the compact car and compact sedan segments, where it sells the aforementioned models, the compact SUV segment is still not that crowded and buyers have few options.

Also, at a time when consumer buying preference is steadily shifting to petrol models, Tata Nexon has an advantage over the Brezza as the latter is not offering a petrol version just as yet, while the Nexon is available in both petrol and diesel.

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