A Grand Update

The Nios bears more than a passing resemblance to the Santro up front, thanks to its similar overall shape

- Gavin D’Souza

With this new generation of the Grand i10, Hyundai has set its sights firmly on eating into the sales of the Maruti Swift — the second-best-selling car in India. The new hatchback is 40mm longer and 20mm wider than the Grand i10 — which will continue to be on sale, albeit repositioned a little lower — and the wheelbase is also up by 25mm.

On the design front, the Nios bears more than a passing resemblance to the Santro up front, thanks to its similar overall shape, upswept headlamps and big ‘cascading grille’. However, finer details like the projector elements within the headlamps, low-set fog lamps, and unique boomerang-shaped LED DRLs give the new car more distinction. The grille is now a single-piece unit — not split — though, the way it extends down to the base of the bumper makes it look a little out of proportion.

The side has nicer details like sharper creases, 15-inch diamond-cut alloys (Asta trim) or 14-inch gunmetal grey alloy wheels (Sportz trim) and a textured blacked-out section in the C-pillar, with ‘G-i10’ embossment. At the rear, the Hyundai ‘H’ has gotten positively huge, and while the relatively small tail-lamps do well to accentuate the car’s width, there’s a whiff of Tiago or Figo about their design.

The more apparent leap forward comes inside the cabin. The interior borrows much from the Venue and Kona, though it gets some unique design elements, such as the hexagonal textures on some surfaces and the use of light-grey plastics in place of the usual black or beige. Then there is the Mercedes-like single-piece gloss-black binnacle housing both the 8.0-inch touchscreen (largest-in-class) and the part-digital instrument cluster.

Though it all looks cool, material quality isn’t a huge step-up from the old car, and there are some bits — like the window switch array — that don’t feel great to touch.