Premier Rio | A Failed Rebadged Chinese Car

It is hard to forget the car brand Premier, it was one of the first car manufacturers in India. We know the car bought the Padmini that was the re-badged version of Fiat 1100 here.  Thereafter the brand manufactured a couple of more cars, one was ‘Rio’. One might or might now have heard about the car but yes it is there and yes it didn’t do well in the Indian market. What was wrong with the car or was happened to the brand Premier? Let’s have a look.

Premier Rio | Insights

The Indian car manufacturer Premier decided to take on the modern cars with its offering Rio. Rio was the first compact SUV in the Indian market before it was even a hot-selling segment.

Premier Rio was based on a car ‘Zotye 2008’ which was a small brand in the Chinese market. The same car ‘Zotye was a copy of the Daihatsu Terios in Japan. Compact SUV was first rolled out on the roads in the year 2009.

Since then it is available in the market but we feel it was too early to launch a new segment in this sector. Though its generations Rio got a couple of facelifts and the company pulled the plug in the year 2018. Let’s check what the car had to offer.

First Gen-Premier Rio | 2009

This is where it all started, it was to introduced to make a whole new segment in the automobile lineup which it failed. It was the first sub-4-meter car that too with decent driving dynamics.

Premier Rio facelift | 2012

In the year 2012, the compact SUV got somewhat of an overhaul. It was nourished with new aesthetics and alongside that a new Fiat-sourced diesel engine. The design changes include a new front and rear bumper and some slight changes in the headlights. On the inside, it got new colour schemes of the dash.

Powertrain and Transmission

• The car made its debut with only one engine option that is a petrol engine in 2009. It was a 1.2-litre motor producing about 75.5bhp@5,800rpm and about 103.9Nm@4,250rpm of peak torque.
• The only facelift the car received got a new diesel engine. It is the tried and tested 1.3-litre fiat sourced multijet engine. It produced 71hp of power and about 180Nm of peak torque.
• The new engine was mated to the Zotye sourced 5-speed manual transmission. and there wasn’t an option for an automatic transmission.
• Possibly the only good part about the car was the gearbox used to send the power to the rear wheels. And it offered a semi-independent suspension at the rear. Which made the car a kind of fun to drive or take it out for some off-roading.

Features | On the Inside and Outside

The car had just bare-bone tech both on the inside as well as outside.

• For starters, only the front windows were powered and the rear was winders.
• The car had a 2-din stereo which was a basic music system at the dash. The steering had no controls mounted on it.
• Even the quality of the plastics was not up to the standards. Certainly not for the price you paid.
• Though the car offered powered ORVMs (Finally some tech).
• On the outside. there was again nothing going for Premier Rio. Except, the car offered a read fog light.

Verdict

The sad part is this is what started the compact SUV segment in the country and as its production ended in 2012, in 2013 the Ford launched their offering in the same segment. The funny part is that the very next year Ford EcoSport took the market like a plague and sold a lot of numbers of the car. This might be because of many factors which include the design, features, built quality and the most important after-sales services.

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