After facing a lot of criticism for bringing unsafe cars to the Indian market, Datsun has now decided to improve the safety scores by introducing the driver side airbag on Go and Go+. During the NCAP crash test Go hatchback failed miserably and scored a zero, then Global NCAP wrote a letter to Datsun’s parent company Nissan and asked them to withdraw Go hatchback from Indian market as it has a weak body shell and lack safety features.
As a result of it, Nissan has updated Datsun Go and Go+ with driver side airbag on the top end T-variant, will be called the GT (O) and GT (O)+ respectively. The new variants cost Rs. 15,000 more than the non-airbag variants.
The announcement was made in March 2015 and production has begun since at Nissan’s Oragadam plant in Chennai. Expect the airbag equipped variant to reach the customers by first week of August 2015. The Datsun has updated the price list of both the variants on its website but the change doesn’t reflect on their official brochures yet. However, the dealers have start accepting bookings for the airbag equipped variants.
Both Go hatchback and Go+ continues to use same 1.2L 3-cylinder petrol engine making 67bhp power and 104Nm of peak torque. This engine comes paired with a 5-speed manual transmission and returns ARAI certified mileage of 20.63 KMPL.
The Datsun models have been slow sellers in Indian market, retailing about 2000 units a month. The new variant will boost the sales of the cars to some extent and we appreciate Datsun’s effort. From 2017, Crash tests will be mandatory for all cars sold in India.
Prices of Go, GO+ airbag variants (Ex-showroom Delhi):-
- Datsun Go T(O)- Rs. 4.19 lakh
- Datsun Go+ T(O)- Rs. 4.81 lakh
