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Its that time of the year again when Car manufacturers offer huge discounts on cars. This might be an attempt to push up car sales during a period when automobile sales normally drop between 15% and 20% because of expectations of an excise duty cut. General Motors India has gone to the extent of offering a refund to consumers in the likelihood of an excise cut in the budget.
Another factor has been consistently high interest rates for the past couple of years on back of RBI’s efforts to suck out liquidity. This has forced car companies to resort to offering discounts to keep sales buoyant. Maruti, India’s biggest manufacturer has discount schemes running on most popular models like the M800, Esteem, Zen Estilo and WagonR.
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers expects a reduction in excise duty from 24% to 16% in this budget and hopes that it will eventually make cars cheaper. So those of you who are postponing your car purchase until April may not be too excited about the current discounts on offer.
This is perhaps UPA’s last budget before the General Elections and experts expect this to be a populist one. However, nobody knows what the Finance Minister has up his sleeve or rather in the briefcase!

The cheapest car in the world “Tata Nano”, which caught the imagination of the people during the 9th Auto Expo has achieved a first for a car in India. It has, for the first time, got the entire country talking about a car, instead of cricket or religion or politics. Tata Motors on January 10 had unveiled its much-awaited small car, which has been positioned as an affordable personal mode of transport for the people, who travel on two- wheelers. Mr Ratan Tata has termed the Nano a landmark in the history of transport, likening it to the first powered flight by the Wright brothers and the first lunar landing.

Like pretty much everyone else I know, I had been following the news about the much-awaited launch of the Tata ‘small car,’ and so when I got the opportunity to see it first hand, I couldn’t pass it up. Just before the launch, the photographers and TV crews got into rugby scrum, the usual mutterings turned into a slanging match and the pushing and shoving became a virtual stampede when the ‘People’s Car’ appeared on stage. Once unveiled however, it came as a pleasant surprise! Certainly the combination of decent looks, the Tata brand name and the unprecedented price make for a killer combination. Through the day families streamed in, looking excitedly at the Nano, and discussing when and how they would buy it. Many of them might never have owned a car before, and their excitement at seeing their dream of owning one come true soon was palpable. The very sight of lakhs of people stream in through the day and throng the Tata booth, says something about the sort of impact this “small car” is going to make. Last heard a leading political party was clamouring for “Nano Quota Policy”!

Following are some details on the car, which were presented at the Auto Expo.

• Length: 3.1 metres
• Height: 1.6 metres
• Width: 1.5 metres
• Engine: Rear-wheel drive, 2-cylinder, 623 cc, multi-point fuel-injection petrol engine. Engine is rear mounted.
• Safety: Nano has an all sheet-metal body, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat-belts, strong seats and anchorages, and the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body. Tyres are tubeless.
• Environment: Tailpipe emission performance exceeds current regulatory requirements, and the Nano has a lower overall pollution level than two-wheelers made in India. It also has a high fuel efficiency (20 km/litre) ensuring low carbon dioxide emissions.

We at TolMol Autos would bring you the complete specifications and on-road price in your city as soon as its available.

After the figures of the festive season sales announced by Auto majors recently, here come the findings of study titled ‘2007 Four-Wheeler Total Customer Satisfaction’ conducted by TNS Automotive. The study represents responses of more than 7,600 new car buyers covering over 60 models. It provides a measure of satisfaction and loyalty a given model enjoys with its customers, considering customer evaluations of sales satisfaction, product quality, vehicle performance and design, aftersales service, brand image, and cost-of-ownership. According to the survey, the new models launched from the General Motors, Mahindra Renault and Maruti have been able to delight their customers with Chevrolet Aveo U-VA, Mahindra Renault Logan and Swift diesel finishing on the top of their respective segments. Here’s the list of segment wise toppers:

Maruti Alto ——— ‘Entry Compact’
Hyundai Santro ——— ’Premium Compact’
Chevrolet Aveo U-VA ——— ’Upper Premium Compact’
Maruti Swift Diesel ——— ’Small Car – Diesel’
Hyundai Accent Petrol ——— ’Entry Midsize’
Honda City ——— ’Midsize’
Skoda Octavia ——— ’Premium Midsize’
Mahindra Renault Logan Diesel ——— ‘Midsize Car– Diesel’
Honda Accord ——— ’Entry Luxury’
Toyota Innova & Mahindra Scorpio (tied) ——— ’SUV’
Honda CRV ——— ‘Premium SUV’

The Maruti Alto finds extremely high satisfaction levels across all product and customer service areas. As pointed out in my last article it created a record in terms of number of cars sold for a model in a month, this November. What the secret behind Alto’s success? Fuel efficiency is one selling point apart from its price. The 250,000-rupee best selling model from Maruti, can go as far as 18.3 kilometers on a liter of petrol in highway driving, according to Autocar India magazine. Maruti also boasts the most dealerships in India, with 561 as of Oct. 31, more than double the total from five years earlier. This could be another factor as your car can be repaired wherever you are in the country with the presence of a strong dealer network across the nation. This is crucial, as roads(still!) are rough in India and cars often get damaged.
Other models from the Maruti stable also keep posting robust sales growth benefiting from the brand loyalty that Maruti-Suzuki enjoys in India. Its 24 years of carmaking here gives it an edge in manufacturing as well as sales. GM, Honda and others rely mostly on imported parts at their Indian assembly plants, while Maruti-Suzuki buys from local and Japanese factories. Maruti-Suzuki loyalty was evident in New Delhi’s southern suburb of Gurgaon recently during the morning rush hour. Stuck in a traffic jam, almost 70 percent of the cars counted by “yours truly” were made by Maruti!

We are a nation of 1.1 billion where only seven in 1000 people own cars. The Indian economy has clocked an average annual growth rate of 8.6 % consistently since 2003. Such phenomenal growth has driven up wages, thereby making autos more affordable. The country’s annual passenger-car sales more than doubled in the past five years to 1.076 million through March 31, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. That total may triple to 3 million by 2015, the government estimates.
India is all set to become the fastest growing car sales market in the world and its the small cars which are seen pushing up the sales. The Government on its part is helping their cause as cars of less than 4 metres in length enjoy tax breaks. Its no surprise then that they made up nearly 71 percent of the 675,499 cars sold between April and October this year.
Car sales figures released by Auto majors for November 2007 vindicate this trend. Car market leader Maruti Suzuki totted up its highest ever domestic sales of 65,216 vehicles this November and its tally is up by 26.6% over last year figures for the same month. Do I need to tell you which was the largest selling car from Maruti’s stable? The answer is obvious, its the Alto, which recorded its highest ever domestic sales of 22,784 vehicles.
Even the country’s largest passenger car exporter Hyundai Motor India Ltd said its sales, including exports, rose by 16.1 pct to 28,944 units riding on its successful debutante, the i10, which is yet another offering in the small cars segment. According to the company, since its launch in end-October, the i10 has sold over 10,000 units. General Motors India also maintained its growth curve by clocking a whopping 110% increase in sales at 5,356 units in November 2007 against 2,554 units in the same month last year. 1426 units out of the total have been the small car Chevrolet Spark and 1670 units of Chevrolet Aveo and Aveo U-VA.