Despite having to deal with the nightmare of its souring investment in JLR, Tata is forging ahead with development of its Altroz hatchback.

The Indian automotive giant has confirmed an evolution of the Altroz, revealed at the Geneva auto show this week. Imagined as an Indian Polo rival, the Altroz is built on Tata’s Agile Light Flexible Advanced (ALFA) platform.

Tata claims that its ALFA engineering project allows for a modular approach to body styles and engine options (even electrification) on a single platform. It’s an industrial engineering copy of the principles which underpin most of VW’s vehicle architectures such as MQB, which serves as a platform to no less than five Audis and fourteen different VW models.

The styling features a dual-headlamp design, flared wheel arches, door creases and strangely asymmetrical windows, with the front doors housing much more glass than the rear doors. Inside there is fully digital instrumentation and a 7-inch infotainment screen which sits atop the dash, framing the centre-vents.

Powering Altroz is a 1.2-litre petrol engine, good for 75 kW and 140 Nm. Classified in terms of size the Altroz is 55 mm shorter, 26 mm narrower and 7 mm taller than VW’s current eighth-generation Polo.

Although the compact hatchback segment is defined by an aspiration to become everything VW as achieved with Polo, the reality is that Altroz’s price positioning will likely be closer to Hyundai’s i10 or Suzuki’s Baleno when it launches to select global markets towards the end of this year.

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