Tata Punch will go on sale this festive season and is expected to be powered by a 1.2-litre Revotron petrol engine with manual and AMT choices
Tata Motors officially released a statement giving away some of the key details of its upcoming all-new SUV. Christened the Punch, it is the production version of the Tata H2X concept displayed at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show and later the HBX concept at the 2020 Auto Expo in a toned-down fashion and both of them received plenty of attention.
The Tata Punch is based on the Impact Design 2.0 philosophy and the more modernised design can be clearly seen in the revealed picture. It gets a split headlamp cluster as in the Harrier and despite being restricted to under four metres in length, the overall styling elements do not look disproportionate or compromised to fit within the rule.
The design will apparently be one of the key selling points of the Tata Punch but it has a number of tricks up its sleeve. Just as with recent Tata models, the Punch will likely be priced aggressively and it will slot below the Nexon compact SUV in the brand’s lineup. Expect the price range to hover around Rs. 5 lakh for the base trim and it may go up to Rs. 7.5 lakh (ex-showroom).
The Tata Punch will compete against Mahindra KUV NXT, Maruti Suzuki Ignis and Renault Kwid. Since the micro SUV segment has not been fully explored, it does have a slight upper hand and the Hyundai Casper will reportedly arrive only next year to India. Tata currently positions itself as the third-largest carmaker in the country on monthly sales charts.
Amidst the good volume performance showed by Altroz, Tiago and Nexon in recent times, it definitely needs a new mass-market based vehicle to close the gap to second-placed Hyundai and the Punch could be the very answer. It is expected to shake up the entry-level space as it could be affordable as well as being high on safety.
It is the second model to be built on the ALFA ARC following the Altroz, which is a Global NCAP 5-star rated hatchback. The top-end variants of the Tata Punch could bag a host of premium features such as a large touchscreen infotainment system, a digital instrument cluster, push-button start/stop, cruise control, iRA connectivity tech, etc to set a new benchmark.