While most people are preparing to wind down as 2025 draws to a close, the Indian automotive industry is in overdrive. In December and January, a whole host of new vehicles are going to be unveiled — the new Tata Sierra, the second-generation Seltos, and the all-new Renault Duster. It is a busy time for people like me.
And it is made busier by the fact that amid all these launches and test drives, I will also be reprising my role as a juror for the Indian Car Of The Year awards. I have written about why ICOTY is the top dog among automotive awards, after all it is the only award that winning carmakers display on their rear windscreens.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me, “What is a new car?”
And that got me thinking that the simplest questions are the hardest to answer. Just because a manufacturer says that its car has new headlights and upholstery, it doesn’t make the car ‘new’. There has to be significant changes, particularly structural, to the car — not just new looks.
But we live in the age of automotive platforms. And that makes evaluating new vehicles much, much harder. The top hat can look very different but the innards are the same. And fundamentally, since the platform sets the basic structure of the car — including aspects like suspension and drivetrain options — vehicles with a common platform have similar driving dynamics.
What is a platform?
It depends on which manufacturer you ask, but essentially, a platform defines certain commonalities between vehicles. The commonalities can be as much as the entire underfloor between the axles or more obtuse ones, such as the distance between the front axle and the firewall between the engine bay and the cabin, or the rake angle of the windscreen.
Platforms allow manufacturers to cut costs, because, like I mentioned, if multiple vehicles wearing your badge have a windscreen at the same angle, you do not need to re-engineer the wipers or defogger vents. Platforms usually also use the same drivetrains and suspension and mechanical components.
Of course, automotive platforms can lead to a sameness in design, which is evident in vehicles using the Skoda-Volkswagen India MQB-A037 platform. For instance, the side profiles of the Skoda Kushaq and the Volkswagen Tiguan are similar, since the manufacturer chose the same platform for both cars to keep costs down even further.
But when you look at Mahindra’s INGLO platform for its electric vehicles, the BE6 and XEV 9e look very different from both inside and outside, even though they share almost everything from a mechanical point of view. Then there is the Hyundai-Kia K1 (now K1Evo) platform on which the Kia Sonet, Syros, Carens, and even the new Hyundai Venue are based. Maruti, meanwhile, uses the Heartect platform for almost all its vehicles. It is a well-engineered platform that has been evolving over the years, and also the one that makes Maruti cars great to drive.
This allows me to get to the new Maruti Suzuki Victoris. It is a nice car to drive, but it was the reason my friend asked me the question that I posed at the start of the column. He went on to ask how the Victoris was different from the Grand Vitara. Sure, the Victoris looks different and has a tonne of new features, but underneath, with the exception of the CNG variant, the two cars are the same.
But I would argue using the colloquialism ‘same, same but different’, especially when it comes to evaluating modern vehicles. Because my cynical self would argue that most modern cars are quite similar, just look at the compact SUV segment, which by next year, following the launches mentioned above and a few more, will have about 32 choices. And while there might be an odd, ‘out-there’ variant, the standard variants have similar engines, similar fuel efficiency, and more or less the same comfort features and driver aids. And unless you push them to the limit to find their weak spots, which as evaluators we do, at standard urban and even highway speeds, they all handle pretty much the same way. The moment one manufacturer adds a dramatic new feature, the others will have it too within six months or a year.
Also read: Maruti-Suzuki’s eVitara is ready to hit the Indian roads—country’s EV ecosystem isn’t
‘Foundation, not a limitation’
I asked Pablo Chaterji, Executive Editor of Motoring World magazine and Chairman of the ICOTY jury, what he felt about this.
“Common platforms may level the playing field mechanically, sure, but that doesn’t mean they eliminate competition. If anything, they force us to judge cars much more critically in terms of design, refinement, technology, features and how cohesively everything comes together. The winners are usually the ones that use the platform as a foundation, not a limitation,” Chaterji said.
And that sort of encapsulates my thoughts as well. The new Tata Sierra might share a platform with the Curvv, but they feel fundamentally different when it comes to design and refinement. Most cars come with a smorgasbord of acronyms of safety and technology features, but we have to figure out how all these combine. For example, I really spend a lot of time playing around with the user interface (UI) on cars, because modern cars are like computers and the interface is vital. You also have to consider some aspects like customer acceptance and value for money for the Indian customer, which is why there is a price cap on vehicles that can contend for ICOTY.
So, while the next few weeks will keep me on my toes and my frequent flyer miles will be racking up quite nicely, it will also give me an opportunity to re-look at many of these vehicles that are going to contend for the awards and examine whether they deserve the big prize.
Kushan Mitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets @kushanmitra. Views are personal.
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