[rock75]

Originally Posted by <Badguy>

So Maruti ready with its old wine in new bottle


There is only one hope for Maruti ie to reduce the price of A star and bring it to levels of Hyundai Eon. May be with a changes engine of 800cc. Maruti are u listening!!

Exactly what i mentioned in the other thread. The easier option for maruti is to:

1. Cut A Star price to ALto K10's price (Even otherwise they are offering a huge Rs 50000 bnenefit package for it and still sales are slowing down)

2. Cut Alto K 10's price to Alto F8

3. Cut Alto F 8 to Maruti 800's price.

Sit back and watch out.

[rameshnanda]

Sometime back they had limited edition of Alto XFun and now Alto Xplore. Maruti cannot counter Hyundai Eon with this limited edition. One interesting point to note is that Eon's boot is bigger than that of new Maruti Swift .

[rm_arjuna]

Alto can never compete with EON , saw the car in flesh y'day .the car is put together verywell , top quality fit & finish / paint job . Looks like alto will take a royal beating in months to come ,not a good prospect for maruti in these testing times.

[MalluDude]

People who'd want an EON would do that for the space and value that it offers. I don't think a few stickers and a music system would make them rethink in favour of Alto. But then in an Indian market, who knows..........

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by GTO

High Points

- Maruti Suzuki introduces the limited edition Alto Xplore, mere hours before the unveiling of the Hyundai Eon.

- The Xplore gets over 10 new features.

- The limited edition is available in the top variants only - Alto Lxi and Alto-K10 Vxi.

- Will be available in 6 Colours.

- Double-din stereo with USB and Bluetooth.

- Leather Seats.

- Body graphics, Body coloured bumpers, ORVMs, door handles and Roof Spoiler.

Oh Wow!!! Come on Maruti, you don't really expect to sell more cars just by adding leather seat covers, a double din stereo, body graphics etc...

The Alto is a great product, and has a definite market segment, please do not ruin it by such gimmicks, if you want to really add value, add some real safety features like a rear defogger and wiper, ABS, airbags, central locking. Those are value adds, not these frilly gimmicks.

What I cannot understand is why all these very educated product managers in these reputed car cos can't catch on to the fact that the Indian auto market is maturing and very rapidly at that. The gimmicks from the 80's seriously can't be expected to work now.

[shekhar_gogoi]

Maruti is still living in the past. Its their age old policy of cosmetic changes and calling it NEW or LIMITED EDITION! They are still to wake up to the fact that the present day customers demand more than just cosmetic and name changes. Hope its not too late before they realize this. Else its not too far before they go the HM way.

[Superleggera]

If Maruti throws in below things on Alto, I may go for it over EON.

1. ABS and Airbags
2. Sunroof
3. An auto Tranny

[harimakesh]

What Most Indians will consider against Alto are:

1. Eon's Fresh new "Fluidic" design
2. Decent space that Eon offers
3. Modern contemporary interiors
4. EON has good boot space accommodating 3 large suitcases of luggage for any week end trip.
5. EON manages to give good ARAI certofied mileage

Being a petrol engined car May be some discounts on Eon after few months from Launch.

If there is another hike of Rs.5/- on petrol comes effective before 2012 then things will be difficult for most small cars.

[vikrantj]

I think Maruti is releasing a car just for the sake of it. It does not offer anything better than Alto. Putting in airbags and ABS would have been a welcome move but simply putting nicer radio etc . The cost of two safety features would have been equal to all non-essential things they have put in the model.

[download2live]

Please do not give ideas to Maruti to counter EON with A-star.
That frog eyed car has been very resoundingly rejected by mainstream customers. Alto with its decent styling and VFM as been a hit with masses.

The problem is that Maruti flogged the dead horse too much. They should have kept refreshing Alto. And that does not means stickers!!! Or seat covers!!!

Alto has to be changed fundamentally in terms of design and fit an finish to take on EON. That will be expensive and more importantly "TIME TAKING".

Add to that the labour problems in Maruti factories.

Right now all Maruti can do is to pray that Hyundai does a "New Ford Fiesta" with the pricing of EON.

[ACM]

Good move by Maruti - Atleast it reacted. But then Leather is not something that consumers in that segment would be after? Graphics too are a waste of money they should have saved that in the price upfont. Rest is fine.

What they actually need to do is relook at A-Star prices and get it closer to that of the Eon. --Lets Dream on.

[libranof1987]

Gone are the days when the Indian consumer is impressed with cosmetic upgrades like body coloured OVRMs and bumpers and the other jazz. Seriously Maruti?! What have you been doing?

With Eon starting at 2.7 lakhs (albeit a few 10ks more than what would have been killer price), people would rather pay 30k extra over the Alto and go for a "modern" car.

These gimmicks from MS aren't going to take them anywhere anymore.

Just like nothing more is possible on the Santro, Alto is done milking it's image. 800 could go on forever because that was a different era altogether. MS needs to keep Alto running in the background and introduce a new car.

Vinyls and body-coloured bumpers, hah! Too bad they already have prism headlights; else that would have been a feature to "xplore"!

Originally Posted by download2live

Right now all Maruti can do is to pray that Hyundai does a "New Ford Fiesta" with the pricing of EON.

Well, Hyundai hasn't committed that mistake; missed the perfect price slightly but still very tempting.

[viper_711]

Originally Posted by Nilesh5417

They all are trying to add that "X" factor..
But seriously. Airbags/ABS at the price point of the eon? I don't think there is a slim chance. EON is a ground up design so i'm sure the costs are well synergized since Hyundai would have gone ahead with a blue print of features vs a certain price point.
For maruti, re-engineering the existing car to provide the same features and level of fit and finish at a similar price point surely has to be expensive!
By the way...how does the current strike at maruti plants in manesar hit the production? Launching variants is one thing, delivering it is another!

@Nilesh5417
The export version of Alto does feature air bags (Not sure of ABS though!) This car was sold in Europe till the A-star became the new Alto for the EU market. So for Maruti to provide these features should not be too difficult or expensive.

All said and done I do subscribe to the overall view permeating through this thread that Maruti probably needs to do more than this and that a fresh new design the Eon has the edge!

[SwiftSD]

Originally Posted by rm_arjuna

Alto can never compete with EON , saw the car in flesh y'day .the car is put together verywell , top quality fit & finish / paint job . Looks like alto will take a royal beating in months to come ,not a good prospect for maruti in these testing times.

Alto has been going strong for some time now , agreed that Eon looks a very good prospect but we would have to wait for a few months to see how Eon fares in the Indian market.

Originally Posted by ACM

Good move by Maruti - Atleast it reacted.

Good point. It is nice to see a car maker holding a major share in Indian market reacting to a new release. The increasing level of competition would ensure that each consumers has the option of choosing from the best of the products.

Originally Posted by ACM

What they actually need to do is relook at A-Star prices and get it closer to that of the Eon. --Lets Dream on.

A-Star has not been a very successful product in spite of having the Maruti tag. Don't see MS bringing down the prices of A-start to compete with the EON and I think they would probably concentrate more on bringing the Alto up in terms of features to take on the Eon.

[ACM]

Originally Posted by SwiftSD

A-Star has not been a very successful product in spite of having the Maruti tag. Don't see MS bringing down the prices of A-start to compete with the EON and I think they would probably concentrate more on bringing the Alto up in terms of features to take on the Eon.

A-Star is in true terms the direct spec competitor to the EON, with the Alto Maruti has been pulling along inspite of a compromise.

This will play right into the hands of Hyundai, as they now cannot drop A-Star prices significantly to be close to EON, and with EON Hyundai seems to be aiming for Alto kind of pricing on it's new platform with the current standard feature set. However much Maruti tries truly matching the EON will not be possible. And yet there are those amongst us who will continue to go for the Alto just because historical preferences take time to change.

Ideally in the longer term Maruti needs to drop Alto closer in price to the Nano (which presently actually exceeds the Alto in all manners and yet does not match up in sales) and the A-Star close to the EON.