Spied: Tata Bolt testing in Chennai; launch soon

There is no denying that Tata Bolt is one of the most anticipated hatchbacks of the year, and the company too is busy testing the vehicle across India before launching it. One such test car has been spotted by our avid reader Manoj Prabakaran at a fuel station near Chennai Airport. Though the spied car is camouflaged, I personally think it's a mid-level variant of the Bolt, as it has different Alloy wheels than the car showcased at the Expo. Also, the car doesn't have rear wiper, which again will be made available with the top-end variant.

Both the Tata Bolt and Zest are the company's global product and will be launched in several international markets after their Indian launch. And we expect these cars to be launched in the second half of this year. Both the cars are designed taking inputs from the three Tata Motor design studios in Pune, Coventry (UK) and Turin ( Italy), come with several segment first features and a new design language on the exterior and the interior of the car.

The new design semantics include new Tata signature grille with new Humanity Line, visually flowing into the headlmaps. The Bolt looks sporty with roof spoiler, fog lamps bezels and aerodynamic shape.

Powering the Bolt petrol model will be the new 1.2-litre Revotron 1.2T engine that mated to a 5-speed Automatic Manual Transmission (AMT) will churn out 84bhp and 140Nm of peak torque. While the diesel model will carry the popular 1.3-litre multijet diesel engine which also powers the Tata Vista.