Audi rubbishes rumours about bringing A3 to India

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New Delhi, Jul 13: German luxury car manufacturer, Audi AG has no plans to bring its small car A3 to India as reported earlier, a top official of the company said.

Talking to FE on the sidelines of the launch of the new Audi A4 sedan, vice president (marketing) of Audi India, Martin Birkner said, “We have no plans to bring the A3 to India. Tata’s Nano has created a completely new segment in small cars and to realise the price points in that segment is not feasible for us”.

The German automaker’s plan to bring the globally successful small car A3 in India has been in news for quite sometime.

However, Birkner brushed them as mere rumours.

In fact, another compact car from the Audi stable, A1—smaller than the A3—is expected to hit the markets by 2010.

On A1’s potential launch in India, Birkner said, “All Audi cars have a certain luxury element and are plonked on high quality. Bringing all this along with a price that is as affordable as the Nano is not possible.”

Audi AG, the luxury-car unit of Volkswagen AG has five models in India—Audi A8, Audi Q7, Audi A6, Audi A4 and Audi TT. It also plans to launch its latest sports car R8 in the country towards the end of this year. Birkner said the car would hit the Indian roads in last quarter of the year and refused to divulge more details.

However, it has been learnt that the company is looking at a launch in autumn, and R8 could roll on Indian roads by October this year. After selling 350 cars last year, Audi had set a target of selling 1,000 cars by the end of 2008 in India.

“We have already sold 470 units till June. Though the turmoil in the economy has surely hit us, it will not deter us from meeting our target. It should be a smooth sail,” said Birkner.

Audi, which has been assembling A6 at its Aurangabad plant, will begin assembling A4 too, by the year-end. As of now, the car is imported as a completely built unit. The company is looking at a production capacity of 1000 units in four years at the plant.

At a global level, the carmaker is evaluating alternative fuels for its models.