MG Motor India today confirmed the launch timeline of their new Hector variant
MG Motor India’s first SUV, Hector is currently being offered as a 5 seater and a 6 seater (Hector Plus). Now, a new 7 seater version will be launched soon, in Jan 2021. This was confirmed by the company via official statement earlier today.
Along with this, MG Motor India also stated that they will be increasing prices of all their cars from 1st Jan 2021. This is due to rise in input costs. MG will increase car prices by up to 3%. Exact prices will be revealed on 1st Jan 2021. Other OEMs who have confirmed price hike are Maruti, Kia, Hyundai and Mahindra.
New 7 Seater Hector
MG had brought in the Hector in the Indian market back in 2019 and since its arrival, it has become the best selling SUV in its segment. Later in 2020, it had brought in the MG Hector Plus which provided additional seating capacity in the same vehicle (with some compromise on the boot space). MG has been retailing around 3,000 units of the Hector every month and as per the waiting period, it is clear that the demand isn’t the concern but instead the production capacity is.
However, considering the fact that the competition in the segment is about to heat up again, majorly due to the scheduled arrival of 2021 Mahindra XUV 500 and Tata Gravitas, MG has been working upon a 7 seater version of the Hector.
Design Updates
In the spyshots, the profile of the test mule looks very much like that of the Hector. However, some design changes are clearly visible. To begin with, the front facia looks different and we are confident that the 2021 Hector Plus 7 seater will be donning an all new grille when compared to the current model. Headlamp setup will mostly remain similar to the current Hector but some re-iteration on the design front is expected.
Other update which can be noticed is the design of the new alloys. MG seems to be planning on introduction of new 10-spoke alloys with a design inspired from petals. The back profile looks similar to current Hector.
Mechanical Updates
We don’t expect lot of changes on the mechanical front of the Hector. However, inclusion of a diesel automatic variant (DCT) has already been confirmed by MG. But will it launch with this update, is yet to be confirmed. Considering the demand of the Automatic Diesel Harrier and the popularity of Diesel AT XUV500, MG would have realized that it is missing out on some potential customers.
While the Hector has been a loaded product in terms of features and equipment, we believe that MG might further rejig the feature list and add in a couple of additional features to make the SUV more competent to compete in 2021.
