Nowadays when several car makers are launching special editions of their cars, there are certain ones which are discontinuing their not so successful variants as well. Maruti, Hyundai and Volkswagen have come up with the special editions of their respective cars to cash in the festive season while Renault and Toyota are the ones to drop some cars from their line ups.
Toyota Kirloskar motors had launched a special edition of Etios Liva called as Etios Sportivo to boost the sales of the slow selling hatchback in the country. Based on V trim, the Sportivo edition featured with racy decals on the sides, edition badging at rear and sporty body kits. But still citing to the poor response the Japanese car major has now decided to discontinue it from the line-up.
The limited edition is available with a 1.5 litre engine that churns out 89bhp power and 132Nm of torque while the standard variant gets the smaller 1.2l engine. The bigger engine results in higher duties which led to the skyrocketing price for the customer and it could be the main reason for customers to shy away from the vehicle. After discontinuation, the Etios Liva is now available with four diesel and four petrol engines and all getting airbags as standard.
Renault Scala
Apart from Toyota motors, the French car maker Renault has also discontinued some of the variants of Scala sedan. Renault has silently discontinued the RxE base and petrol RxL CVT variants of the sedan. The sedan is now available in three variants only- Petrol RxL, diesel RXL and Diesel RxZ.
The chief reason for cutting down the number of variants could be the very scanty numbers of the premium sedan. Renault Scala has been the slowest selling model in the C segment with August 2015 sales ticking at miserable 30 units as compared to 38 units sold in August 2014.
The only Petrol variant RxL is powered by a 4-cylinder engine that puts out 98bhp@6000 rpm and peak torque of 134Nm@ 4000 rpm. While the Diesel variants get the power from a 1461cc, 4-cylinder unit that delivers 85bhp@3750 rpm and 200 Nm of torque@2000 rpm. After omitting CVT gearbox out of Scala, both the engine now left equipped with a five-speed manual transmission which drives the power to front wheels.
