Tata Nexon Engine and Performance

The Nexon comes with the choice of a 1.2 litre three cylinder petrol engine from the Revotron family and a 1.5 litre four cylinder Revotorq turbo diesel engine. Our test car for this review was the diesel. This is a new motor that makes its debut in the Nexon so expect it to power more Tata cars in the future. This engine develops 110 horsepower at 3750 rpm with 260 Nm of maximum torque that comes up between 1500-2750 rpm.  The motor is mated to a six speed manual gearbox. There is good low end despite turbo lag below 1700 rpm. Acceleration is very linear and mid range performance is good too. You don’t really feel the turbo kicking in so don’t expect push back in the seat feeling. Drivability is excellent as well. The engine has good traction and you don’t feel the need to downshift too often. It will easily pull in third or fourth gear at 1500 rpm. The Nexon feels right at home on the highway. It will happily cruise 100-120 kph in sixth gear at 2000 rpm all day long. Thanks to the low end torque, downshifting during overtaking is not really required. On the other hand, the engine runs out of steam past the 3500 rpm mark so there is actually no sense taking it to the redline at all. Also it also gets noisy in the higher rpms. The gearbox has decent shifts but isn’t really the slickest around. Infact it does feel a bit notchy in first and second gears. The clutch however is light. AMT test mules of the Nexon are already doing the rounds and Tata Motors will be launching the AMT variant in early 2018. There are two additional drive modes in the Nexon apart from the default City mode. Eco mode will dull performance but will up the fuel efficiency by a few notches. It can also be used in dense traffic as well thanks to low end grunt of the engine.  Sport mode increases throttle response and the difference is apparent. We used this mode quite a bit on the open highway and it really makes the Nexon fun to drive.  All the 260 nm of torque comes alive and even makes overtaking a breeze.   The instrument cluster also changes colour according to the drive mode chosen, Blue, Green and Red respectively.

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