Small Cars Top in Comparison With Big Numbers
The calendar year 2010 can be certainly described as the year of the highest number of new car launches in the Indian passenger industry. The domestic sales volume of mini and compact segment put together are set to reach close to 1.5 million units for the year 2010. Overall passenger car industry in India has recorded total sales of 1.72 million units for the January to November 2010 period as against 1.31 million units in the same period last year, the sales of mini and compact segments stood at 1.34 million when compared with 1.02 million units in the same period last year. Besides launch of new variants of existing compact models, At Present there are twenty-five anchor models in the mini and compact segments.
The country’s 2 biggest players in the compact segment — Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai continued to record higher sales with long waiting period for several of their models, 2010 also saw US carmakers General Motors and Ford ending the year with highest ever sales volume since their inception in the country, mainly driven by their compact cars. “2010 has proved to be a good year for the auto industry in general and GM India in particular. We crossed one lakh unit mark for the first time since GeneralMotor’s inception in India on 27th November. We should be selling more than 1,10,000 units in this calendar year against 69,579 units sold in 2009 — a growth of over 60% when the industry is likely to register a growth of over 30% 2010,” said P Balendran, vice-president, General Motors India.
Ford India, compact car Figo was the game changer. The company has been struggling with annual sales volume of 30,000-42,000 units over the past 5 years. Brands like Volkswagen and Nissan join the compact car race with their models Polo and Micra respectively in this year. Though Nissan Micras are exported in big numbers, Nissan’s Micra is yet to perform in domestic market like other models launched during the year. A report of Emkay Research points out that there is a huge increase in 1st time buyers of cars in the country. “The two lakh plus income group (population of 148 million) has seen a sharp jump over the past decade, resulting in a burgeoning target population for passenger vehicles,” it said.
{Source: Autoblogs}