The petrol people mover is descended from the Bajaj-Tempo Viking passenger van. I'm old enough to remember it. It had a two-stroke engine and front-wheel-drive. It died as soon as Bajaj-Tempo introduced their diesel-based Matador passenger van.
The majority of Indian car buyers are one car people. A slim minority have two cars, and a wafer-thin miniscule minority have three cars.
Category 1:
Nobody would buy an Innova as their first or only car.
Category 2:
My first car would be a general purpose 3 box sedan.
The second car would be an economy hatchback.
So: Accent and Santro
Category 3:
My first car would be a general purpose 3 box sedan.
The second car would be an economy hatchback.
The third car would be a people mover, ideally a rugged one (even with four-wheel-drive)
So: Baleno/Corolla, Getz/Swift, Scorpio.
Americans (spiritual descendents of the wild-west cowboy -- as seen in Westerns)
love pick-up trucks and 4x4s, ranch-houses, faded jeans and sports-rifle.
Soccer moms who used to drive their kids, the family dog and the kids' friends to the school soccer/baseball/football match, drive a big station wagon, or minivan.
Europeans are either
the hot Volkswagen Golf hatchback people,
the Mercedes E-class/Ford Mondeo/Opel Signum people or
the Alfa-Romeo Brera/Jaguar-XK spider/Opel-GT coupe people.
India is a country where the sophisticated aspire for higher education.
Indians with the ability to afford the purchase and upkeep of automobiles are
somehow closer to the suave European in their mentality
than the ripped-jeans show-off cowboy American.
We would rather go for Baleno/Fiesta/City/Accent/Viva than Innova.
Does this give us any hints to why a petrol Innova would never succeed in India?
The diesel Innova of course could be adapted to suit the good tourist taxi market.
Ram |