Luxury Cars Sales Chart – March 2011
India has traditionally been a hatchback market. Even now (Mar-11), Maruti sold around 38000 Altos’, Hyundai’s i10 sold around 14000 units. Luxury car manufacturers had always refrained from the conservative Indian market and had questioned its potential. But, time changed and so did the Indian Automobile scenario. We saw a 20-Lakh SUV (Fortuner) burn the sales chart and command a waiting period of more then 6 months. Toyota’s Fortuner has now averaged around 1000 units/month. A section of the Indian market has rapidly evolved to become luxury & brand conscious rather then price sensitive.
BMW is one of the manufacturers who has rightly understood the above phenomena and hit the nail on its head. Its aggressive product and pricing policy has made it leapfrog Mercedes in terms of sales and value creation. BMW’s has again played its price vs value game with its SUV offering X1 and is reaping immediate results. The vehicle is in huge demand now and promises to set new benchmark in sales in times to come. Mercedes still stands as epitome of luxury and its loyals are undeterred by sportiness of BMW or cheekiness of Audi. C-class yet regains its leadership in the segment and gives stiff competition to its peers. Whereas 5-series proves itself to be a complete package and oversells E-class by a margin.
The Rs. 50-Lakh wonders – Nissan 370 Z & Mitsubishi Evo X manages to sell 1 unit each.
Volkswagen’s Beetle did an excellent 21 numbers instead of its humongous price of around Rs. 24 Lakh (on-road). But Phaeton sale was eye-popping – it did 15 no.!!!
XC 60 & XC 90 did a satisfactory figure of 37 and 7 respectively. Volvo is slowly finding confidence in Indian market – this can be further re-instated with the launch of its C-class, 3-series rivaling S60 launch in India.
Porsche’s much debated product Cayenne sold around 9 no.!!! Whereas other models together did around 6 no. This not only depicts Indian love for SUV’s but also signifies the value of practicality in Indian market.
Overall, the sales was very encouraging and demonstrated double and triple digit growth for these luxury car manufacturers. This news is further strengthened by the arrival of super-luxury brands such as Maserati and Infinity in Indian market this April.