The deep-rooted slowdown has affected the car sales severely from a long time now, but it seems that some models have been successful in shielding themselves against this, particularly those with diesel engine. According to Sundeep Bafna, Fort Point Automotive that sells Maruti Suzuki vehicles and Hero MotoCorp Ltd. motorcycles, the primary cause of laxity in the market is high demand of cars that have unsatisfactory supply. As a result, the customers have to go through long waiting periods for a number of car models, before they are delivered with one.
Diesel versions of many Maruti vehicles namely, Swift, Swift DZire, Ritz and SX4 have been the most preferred models owing to widening difference between petrol and diesel prices. Other large-scale productions like the Chevrolet Beat diesel and Tata Indigo Manza diesel have also witnessed a significant rise in their demand.
Shashank Srivastava, Chief General Manager, Maruti Suzuki India Limited, said, “We have close to 100,000 bookings for the Swift and 90 per cent of it is for diesel variants. While the petrol Swift is delivered to the consumer within a week, customers have to wait for more than three-four months to accept delivery of the diesel model.”
Even as the entry level diesel version of Swift costs around Rs. 5.46 lacs (ex-showroom Mumbai) that is 1 lac more than the price of petrol version, demand for former has seen much growth. In a bid to shorten the waiting period, India's largest car maker is striving to boost the production of Swift even more. The production capacity currently stands at 17,000-18,000 units a month.
However, a few petrol cars like Honda Jazz are fortunate enough to witness an increase in their demand. The premium hatchback Jazz currently has a waiting period of seven to eight months. According to company officials, buyers who have booked the hatchback will have to wait till June 2012 to get the delivery. Following Honda's announcement of Rs. 1.6 lac discount on Jazz, more people are making their way to the showrooms.
Jnaneswar Sen, Senior Vice-President, Marketing and Sales, Honda Siel Cars India (HSCI) said, “The sluggishness in the car market has not impacted the demand for Jazz and Brio. We had plans to push production to maximum capacity around November but because of the Thai floods we were forced to cut production.”
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has emerged as the fittest survivor as it happens to be the only automotive company that has seen a 21% growth this year. Moreover, the car maker has decided to double-up the production capacity of its powerful SUV, XUV500.
Rajesh Jejurikar, Chief Executive, automotive division, M&M, said, “People bought SUVs at Rs. 7 lacs and if they wanted to go for something better they had to shell out Rs. 15-20 lacs for it. There was nothing in between. We undertook bookings for 9,500 units of the XUV500 and hope to clear the backlog by January.”
Due to the current slowdown in the economy, almost every car maker has recorded worst-ever figures till date. However, the year 2012 is likely to bring much needed relief to these camps mainly because the highly anticipated Auto Expo arrives soon.
