Skoda Fabia gets new variants, looses safety features

Skoda India has smartly introduced new variants for its Skoda Fabia hatchback making a total of 12 variants now available in market. But car experts have come up with many lackings in the newly launched variants although Skoda has slashed prices on the upfront. The rising petrol prices and hike in interest rates might have triggered Skoda India to strip down its models in order to pave way for new variants. Anyways, if this brings sales for Skoda Fabia, the risky formula may be considered as successful. To start with, Skoda India has replaced the Skoda Classic with entry level Skoda Active version both in petrol and diesel variants. However the irony is, Skoda India has taken away driver side airbag, a critical safety feature which was available on the previous Classic variant.

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And the new Skoda Fabia price too has gone down only from Rs 4.47 lakh to Rs 4.44 lakh (all prices being average ex-showroom prices in India). Fabia Active Diesel is also introduced at an average ex-showroom price of Rs 5.53 lakh whereas Classic diesel was just Rs 3000 less. So it is very obvious that Skoda has actually raised the price indirectly. The list of woes seems to be harsher at the mid level where Skoda Ambition has been devoid of both driver as well as passenger airbags even as the price is slashed to Rs 6 lakh. Skoda Ambient diesel used to be sold for Rs 6.08 lakh previously. The Fabia Petrol Elegance is priced at Rs 5.84 lakh for the 1.2 Liter petrol variant while the 1.6 liter petrol variant sells for Rs 6.16 lakh. 

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However, the top end Fabia Elegance variant gets a rear wiper-washer and 15 inch alloys for a price increase of around Rs 10 thousand which hardly makes a difference. Fabia Active Plus and the Fabia Ambition Plus are variants that have minor additions to the Active and Ambition variants. Both the variants gets power windows all around and as an additional feature Fabia Ambition Plus variant comes with a folding key which doubles up as a remote control for locking/unlocking the doors and the boot. Now with total 6 petrol variants and 5 diesel variants, Skoda Fabia hatchback is experimenting a lot with safety features which as it is get tad little importance in India.

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