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Watch out Duster, EcoSport, Rush is coming

The Renault Duster is in, Ford Ecosport could come ahead of its scheduled launch, and Maruti is hurrying up things to launch the Maruti XA Alpha. In the meantime, other car makers such as Toyota are also preparing their compact SUV offerings for India. It is said that this Japanese car maker will be launching Toyota Rush in India. Now that everybody has seen that if Duster can get 6000+ bookings in less than a week then why can’t their offering fetch tremendous response? Surely nobody has realized that there is immense potential in the compact SUV market in India and it seems that everybody was dissuaded with the performance of Premier Rio that is the forerunner in the segment.

Expected to be priced in the Rs 8 lakh to Rs 12 lakh price bracket, the Rush SUV by Toyota will have the same upright stance as that of the Toyota Fortuner but it will be much shorter as well as much thinner than its big brother. Meanwhile, auto industry experts believe that the new SUV by Toyota will be launched somewhere around the beginning of 2014. Also, it is said that Toyota is still to finalize the models, variants and engine options it will be offering on the Rush. Meanwhile, Toyota’s best selling MPV Innova is struggling with the new entry Ertiga launched by Maruti as well as the new BSIV Tavera Neo.

As per the details available, the compact SUV Rush is the second generation Chinese car Terios. Notably, Premier sells the Terios first generation in India as the Rio. Toyota is expected to launch the latest generation of the Terios badged as Toyota Rush in India sometime next year or early 2014. The Rush price in India is expected to lead it in the segment however, a 2014 launch will be too late as by then Ecosport, Duster and XA Alpha besides Hyundai Compact SUV will be taking over the market almost to saturation level as it is a new unexplored market.