The Evalia was launched by Nissan with the high hopes of taking away a chunk of the pie from the likes of the Toyota Innova, but the car literally bombed at the sales charts. It could never really take off and despite repeated efforts from Nissan, the car just went on to become a dud seller. The Evalia is a good family car but the same has been restricted to cab markets and even that share is decreasing since the launch of the Chevrolet Enjoy. Nissan is concerned about the car and is looking to turn things around. The company will be launching an updated Nissan Evalia later this year, most probably around the Diwali-Dusshera time (about Novemenr 2013) to capitalise on the festival buying season.
The biggest change will be the addition of captain seats in the middle row, replacing the bench seats currently found on the Evalia. This will give the car a slightly premium feel, increasing the appeal of the car an ensuring higher sales. The company will also be altering the rear windows, sliding windows will be introduced in place of the current pop-out ‘butterfly’ units.
The captain seats will be offered on the top-end variants of the car, on the outside the same variants will get a rear-windshield wiper. The updated Nissan Evalia will get better interiors across the variants. Prices of the Evalia might be slightly revised too.
The Evalia is powered by the 1.5 litre K9K diesel engine that develops 85bhp-200Nm and powers a host of cars from Renault and Nissan in different state of tune. The Nissan Evalia clocks only around 200 units a month even when it costs almost Rs.3.8-4 lakhs less than the Toyota Innova which manages around 5,500-5,600 units on an average. Nissan expects the sales to go north after the updated Evalia is launched but we would like to get our hands on the car before we pass a judgement about its future.
