Toyota Rush likely to come in 2017 –EXCLUSIVE

Toyota has been contemplating the Rush, SUV for a while and now it seems that the Japanese brand is considering entering this segment by 2017. The new Toyota Rush or the Daihatsu Terrios will the company’s spearhead SUV for the Indian car market. Toyota has a very successful UV story in India and it will want to expand its advantage from there. The Qualis, Innova and even the Fortuner have been the segment leaders for a majority of the time and hence Toyota has an upper hand in the UV segment, when it comes to brand connect. The Rush coming to India will see an upgrade in styling and features to suit the requirement of the Indian car market. Now, with even Honda getting into the SUV segment with the BR-V, we can expect the Rush also to come feature loaded. The Rush will have three rows of seating with a seating capacity for seven (basically 5+2). It comes with 2-DIN Head Unit CD Player with Tuner, MP3, Aux-Jack, USB, and Bluetooth and six speakers, leather wrapped steering wheel and leather bolstered seats too. The second row has 50:50 split and reclining as well, while the third row gets 50:50 split. The Rush even has EBD and dual airbags too. This SUV will be a tad longer than the Renault Duster and something similar to the Honda BR-V in size.

The Toyota Rush will be pitted against the Renault Duster, Hyundai Creta and even the Mahindra Scorpio, Tata Safari to a certain extent. At the moment, Toyota only has the 1.4-litre diesel engine in its Indian stable, which we highly doubt will used for the Rush. It needs a more powerful engine and this will be even shared with the Corolla Altis diesel as well. Toyota is offering the Rush with rear-wheel drive and 4-wheel-drive options, and we reckon both should come to India.

Toyota will want to capitalise on a segment that no foreign automaker has tried to get into. This will easy only if they increase the localisation of the Rush, in this manner they will have the advantage of a higher brand value atleast in the urban areas and the bullet-reliability that Toyota products possess. Toyota Rush will be priced between INR 12-17 lakhs (on-road) and this will help the Japanese to get a substantial market share in the UV2 segment.