Toyota Glanza premium hatchback: Dealer sends in pictures of the Maruti Baleno-based car

Toyota Kirloskar Motors Limited (TKML) has put out a teaser picture of the Maruti Baleno-based premium hatchback.  The car will be officially laynched in India on the 6th of June, as the first-ever badge-engineered car from Toyota for the Indian market. A Toyota dealer in India has sent in these pictures of the Glanza premium hatchback to a Team-Bhp member.

It’s not clear if these pictures reflect renderings from the dealer’s end, or if they’re indeed those of the Glanza.  From the looks of it, they appear like renders. The Toyota dealer may have been sending the renders to potential  buyers to give them an idea on what to expect from the car.

If the Toyota Glanza indeed ends up looking like the car in these pictures, it means that the badge-engineering job  will be limited to wapping badges. The teaser has also indicated that the Toyota Glanza would feature the same tail lamps, bootlid, bumper and alloy wheels as the Maruti Baleno.

The Toyota Glanza will be sold as a petrol-only hatchback given the fact that the Maruti Baleno will also dump the  diesel engine come 2020. The petrol engine is likely to be the 1.2 liter DualJet motor with a mild hybrid layout as  standard. This engine makes 82 Bhp-113 Nm, and features a small electric motor that assists it during acceleration.  This set-up, which is not a conventional hybrid, is meant to cut tail pipe emissions and boost fuel efficiency, at a  much lower cost than a full fledged hybrid. The Toyota Glanza will be offered with two gearbox options: a 5 speed manual and a CVT automatic.

This also means that the Toyota Glanza will miss two other engine options that the Maruti Baleno comes with – a 1  liter-3 cylinder turbocharged petrol engine with 101 Bhp-150 Nm, and a 1.3 liter Fiat Multijet turbocharged diesel  engine with 74 Bhp-190 Nm.

The Toyota Glanza is expected to have similar interiors and identical features when compared to the Maruti Baleno.  The car is likely to be offered in two trims, one for the manual and one for the automatic. Toyota is likely to price  its version of the Baleno higher than the one sold by Maruti Suzuki. Toyota is estimating sales of about 2,000  monthly units of the Glanza for the Indian car market.

This means that the Toyota-badged car will sell less than one  fifth of the Maruti Baleno. It’s purely meant to be a presence marker for Toyota in the premium hatchback market as the Japanese automaker has been quite weak in the sub-10 lakh rupee segments in the Indian market. Apart from the  Glanza, the automaker will launch more badge-engineered cars such as the new Ertiga MPV, the Vitara Brezza compact SUV and the Ciaz C-Segment sedan.