[jkdas]

All hail Toyota in India. They of course gave us a great MUV, the Qualis and after they built the brand they have us the Innova which IMHO is priced too much ( Honda too priced cars costly but learned a lesson). The same with Fortuner with the pricing if you compare price of Fortuner and Innova elsewhere!

And they thought they will kick Honda's market if they bring a diesel Altis, it didnt !

And they thought they will bring a cheap old hatch for rest of the Indians and even give a diesel!

Did the plan work? I bet they expected the booking Swift got when it(Liva/Etios) was launched, they didnt. What went wrong?

[harimakesh]

Altis Diesel is over priced for its small engine, NO A/T on offer and hence could not shake as Cruze has emerged a decent overall competition to Diesel Altis and Cruze offers A/T also.

As for Etios/Liva this is Toyota's poor perception of Indian buyers something I see Toyota's Nano effort! Indecent interiors are the sole reason. In a crowded price sensitive C segment Toyota cannot just sell anything under its badge.

IMHO Etios with its current pathetic interiors will not sell in volumes.

With XUV in the scene Altis Diesel if offered with better powerful engine and A/T with attractive prices it can sell more.

[ramzsys]

They say Q in all their ads, and then build these cars with anything but Q in the interiors and driver's console.

Maybe their engine is a gem, but the overall package is not appealing.

[Durango Dude]

When Hyundai can bring it's international line up and give India priority of place and launch it's international products with same specifications, here, first, why not Toyota? What happened was Indians expected Corolla Altis quality for half the price what they got was what they hadn't bargained for. People have the knowledge and info via the internet and travel. Courtesy, Maruti and Hyundai, Indians have come to expect some amount of refinement at a price. All that lack of rubber beading/sound deadening and obvious cost cutting put off Indians within a few months time and they have started to look elsewhere for a bargain. People have come to expect some refinement from Toyota products and when they didn't it in the Etios/Liva have walked away from it.

[sidindica]

Originally Posted by jkdas

All hail Toyota in India. They of course gave us a great MUV, the Qualis and after they built the brand they have us the Innova which IMHO is priced too much ( Honda too priced cars costly but learned a lesson). The same with Fortuner with the pricing if you compare price of Fortuner and Innova elsewhere!

And they thought they will kick Honda's market if they bring a diesel Altis, it didnt !

And they thought they will bring a cheap old hatch for rest of the Indians and even give a diesel!

Did the plan work? I bet they expected the booking Swift got when it(Liva/Etios) was launched, they didnt. What went wrong?

The current perception is that:

1) taxi segment filled with Innova taxi - though its a fantastic offering, it still is a breadwinner for toyota..but somehow as correctly pointed out, overpriced. The fortuner is again now decent but we should laud the Indian manufacturers like the tata (aria) and mahindra (XUV) for taking the fight right to the toyota's doorstep. Both the Indian products are very very close to the fortuner as WRT competency.

2) altis is a little overpriced preposition, especially with the underpowered medival era 88 hp engine in a 13 lakh sedan. Ridiculous.

3) etios and liva are straight pitted against the the TATA product- manza and the vista,but its very simple-the manza and the vista are much better products. In the etios and liva D, the quality and finesse is just not there... hence it does not stand in competition. Secondly, over the years, Tata has learnt a lot and are now producing some fantastic quality products, with improved finesse.

4) The etios and liva are nothing but overpriced metal sheets on wheels. They came at a wrong time when the Indian car market is VALUE ORIENTED, not COST oriented. Skimping on basics such as insulation and cladding which even a humble typical maruti/ hyundai/ tata small cars have is nothing but sacrilege.Giving safety features on the middle variants is OK, but what about the body rigidity?

[hvs]

hopeless design, inferior execution = etios
toyota mistook us indians as fools & expected to sell its junk under 'Q class' brouhaha..

[swiftnfurious]

And I guess initially Toyota / Indian market publicized these two cars as cheap, made for India offerings. When finally it came out, only the interiors were cheap, not the price ! And I believe that's one of the main reasons it failed. Toyota should never have played against the Swift / Dzire with these kind of crappy interiors / engine options / price. People do respect the T badge, but they should find value too in the offering!

[vishnugs]

I agree to comparisons made. Just a point of thought, even the most successful products of Toyota including the Qualis and Innova were slow starters. Toyota as a brand does not aim at the enthusiasts who are generally the early adopters. Etios + Liva 6-7k a month is not bad, may be it is time to tell whether they will mean to the bottom line of the brand.

[drmohitg]

An owners perspective

Altis Diesel: This car has its USP as mentioned by GTO - " comfortable, reliable point A to point B sedan which has the most comfortable back seat, decent interiors and amazing FE."

They never advertised it as a diesel rocket. If you want to fly from 0-100 in 3-4 seconds lesser then the Altis, you are free to look elsewhere. But then those cars will return you a FE of 10-12. The Altis drives perfectly in city traffic. You can easily zip through traffic. The back seat is amazing and you can relax there and let your chauffeur drive leisurely. The NVH levels are very well controlled. The new touch screen music system is amazing for an average music listener. The AC is a chiller. And the most important of all - FE? I am getting 18-19 kmpl in Full Delhi city traffic with 100% AC. On the same roads my NHC gives me 11, Lancer gives me 9 and Innova hovers between 10-11. So in short this car is a gem of a car and it depends if it suits your need. It did for us.
Also the After sales is so cheap. Rs 1500 for the first 2 services including 1000 kms and 10000 kms.

Innova: It is overpriced yes. I would love to see Toyota add more features to it or reduce the prices by a couple of Lacs with the top end coming at 12L. But its not a fair world. Until and unless there is some decent competition in the segment why should Toyota not charge obscene amounts for the car? You say learn from Honda. Well I would not mind going the Honda way if I was heading the Toyota brand. Sell your cars at a premium since your brand sells and there is a total lack of competition. If at all tomorrow there is some worthwhile competitor and people start looking elsewhere, you drop the prices and once again regain your market leader tag.

A similar logic also applies to Fortuner. That car is way overpriced and still sells more then all the other cars in the segment clubbed together with all there plush rides and way better gadgetry. Why would Toyota drop the prices in that case?

Etios/Liva: I haven't driven the cars but yes I hated the interior tone and design. The quality is average but then so is the case with Maruti and Tata. Hyundai in this respect is far better although most of there cars suffer from steering rattles according to many owners on the forum. So collectively if they are selling 6-7K units of Etios, its pretty decent.

[Vid6639]

Originally Posted by jkdas

All hail Toyota in India. They of course gave us a great MUV, the Qualis and after they built the brand they have us the Innova which IMHO is priced too much ( Honda too priced cars costly but learned a lesson). The same with Fortuner with the pricing if you compare price of Fortuner and Innova elsewhere!

And they thought they will kick Honda's market if they bring a diesel Altis, it didnt !

And they thought they will bring a cheap old hatch for rest of the Indians and even give a diesel!

Did the plan work? I bet they expected the booking Swift got when it(Liva/Etios) was launched, they didnt. What went wrong?

Actually, there's a 3-4 month waiting list for the Etios Diesel Sedan.

I think it's a bit early to say since the car was launched only mid September.

The September sales are really low for the Etios as I don't think it reflects the diesel numbers fully. The Etios sedan should do well I think.

The same can't be said for the Liva since it's available only in the lower trim. The Figo and new Swift will give the Liva a tough time.

The Innova is overpriced by a huge margin and so is the Fortuner but till now if you were in the market for a good MUV or a proper SUV you had only these 2 choose from.

For Innova buyers they had to choose between Innova or Xylo.

For Fortuner buyers, their other choice was the ancient Pajero or Endeavour.

Come the XUV 500 and both Innova and Fortuner will feel the pinch.

Customers bought an Innova since there was no other MUV or SUV that gave a car like feel. Noone likes the looks but when you have the Toyota badge and car like feel it's a no-brainer.

Now the XUV boasts of the car like feel with looks and presence to match. Forget the Toyota brand name when you have a proper butch looking SUV that doesn't drive like a box on wheels and matches the Innova on price.

Then there's the Fortuner buyer. Majority of the Fortuner buyers buy a Fortuner because they want the butch looks and knowing that they can take the Fortuner anywhere. It's a different matter that majority of the Fortuners you see do their duties in crowded city roads and have spick and span underbodies and are neatly polished and shiny. It's got the looks and it's a Toyota. Most of these buyers would have been happy with an Innova if it were not for the Innova's MPV looks. Their budgets were higher than the Innova and the only option frankly speaking is the Fortuner.

Now there's the XUV. Butch looks and presence, check. Space, check. car like driving feel, check. some offroading possible, check. performance, check. Reliability, still a ?.

Lo and behold, the XUV ticks all the right boxes for a guy who would have opted for a Fortuner. Added bonus is XUV gets better interiors and not the same interiors as an Innova.

My feeling is Fortuner sales will drop in the coming months albeit very gradually. Innova will also feel the pinch but not as much as ability to carry 7 people comfortably is still the Innova's advantage.

Toyota gets 1000 kits for the Fortuner every month since launch. Till now they have been able to sell 1000 per month on the dot. I have the feeling these numbers will go down to 800 or so in the coming months.

Oh yeah and not to forget the Altis diesel Taxi market zindabad. Every single diesel Altis I've seen is a yellow board and what's even more disappointing is that they are all black in colour, and like a fool I changed the front grill on my car to that from the Diesel. Now everyone asks me why I got a Diesel Altis.

But seriously, they are selling a 1000 Altis per month between petrol and diesel. I'm sure atleast 30-40% are diesel.

[motorworks]

Toyota has made a gross judgement error with the Liva and the etios. To me they are just too basic.

1) When bulk of the sales is going to come from your mid variants, what is the logic behind starting at such low prices? Couldnt they have engineered a smaller corolla or even something like a toyota vios which sells pretty well in sri lanka and other asian markets? So what if it didnt have an attractive base price? Wouldnt the mid variants which sell 70% taken care of the volumes?
2) Toyota has spent at least 10 years in india now. Does any one remember the initial ad campaigns of Toyota? They were all about understanding the indian customer's mindset. May be they applied the learnings of 2001 in 2011!
3) With all its global presence and r & d, all they could manage was a liva / etios at this price? If some other manufacturer like maruti had come out with such products, people would have slammed it straight away and we wouldnt even have received some positive feedback that we have got till date.
4) I actually see the etios making inroads in the taxi segment. The Logan / verito is the only option right now, since dzires have long waiting periods and lack rear leg room. Fiesta classic is slowly getting in to the taxi market, so etios can do well there too. But cab drivers / fleet owners expect a great deal of reliability from these cars, so it is to be seen whether the etios will do well here.

@ Drmohit, you have stated that the interior quality of the etios /liva is average just like Maruti / tata. I think you need to seriously evaluate the new swift / new vista with the liva back to back to understand how the liva stacks up.

[dkaile]

No, they didn't get the 90K odd booking the Swift got. But is it an inferior product. NO, by a long shot.

Where they might have faltered is the customer's perception and expectation from the Toyota brand. The customer's expectations were too high, the interior quality disappointed upfront. But will the customer look beyond the absent upfront 'bling' factor. YES, definitely. Give it some time and let the word of mouth about it's reliability and frugality spread. Then let's talk again after 2 years about this product.

@motorworks - 2 of my close friend own the last gen swift and 1 owns the current Dzire diesel. And all 3 are not very enthused with its long term build quality, which was 'perceived' to be there but sadly all 3 have lots of shake, rattle and roll. Suzuki's product were 'always' built to a cost. Toyota has just tread into it's territory. Once you will drive a Toyota for a few years, you will never return to a Suzuki, like me.

Like vishnugs mentioned, Toyota's product may be slow starters (like the bread box Qualis) but when people see the long term build quality and reliability and frugality of the product, they start converting. This formula has worked all over the world for Toyota (the same cannot be said about Suzuki, which was saved by it's Indian gamble, otherwise it might have been wiped off globally). I don't see it failing anytime soon in India too... just don't jump the gun.

[kiku007]

I was just thinking today morning, did Toyota dilute their brand value with the Etios twins lured by potential volumes?

A reliable yet affordable Toyota for the masses is a dream, no doubt. People should be lapping it up. But what was the end product? The etios twins are prime examples of soulless cost cutting, boring design and questionable quality.

And the timing couldn't be worse. Repriced jazz, brio, sunny, eon etc have proved that VFM need not necessarily mean drop in quality.

IMHO it wasn't a wise decision to provide products of questionable quality to gain market share in the mass segment. Will cost them in the long run.

[DevilsCry]

I have one question. Are taxi drivers buying Etios diesels? For taxi, interiors would not matter. Rest features in Etios are a big plus point for taxi.

If taxi drivers are not buying Etios then it would mean one thing- they don't have faith in Etios' reliability. What do you guys think?

[Ym-enjn]

Originally Posted by sidindica

2) altis is a little overpriced preposition, especially with the underpowered medival era 88 hp engine in a 13 lakh sedan. Ridiculous.

Gone are the days when Altis was 13 lakhs Sedan. The upper model of Altis Diesel GL is over 17 lakhs in Jaipur on Road.. and Altis Petrol AT is over 18 Lakhs. Very very overpriced..

Originally Posted by Vid6639

Oh yeah and not to forget the Altis diesel Taxi market zindabad. Every single diesel Altis I've seen is a yellow board and what's even more disappointing is that they are all black in colour, and like a fool I changed the front grill on my car to that from the Diesel. Now everyone asks me why I got a Diesel Altis.

Lol.. Vid.. The way you write it is even funnier..

The resale value is also not the same for Toyota vehicles like it used to be.. Specially Petrol. Very bad resale, even the Toyota U-Trust guys themselves are destroying Toyota resale market by quoting very less price to sellers.