[ratangera]

Thanks for the numbers, how i see BHPians few perceive companies

Tata- you my kid are capable, work on weak points
GM- Even actuaries students take less time to figure their way out
Fiat- Tumse na ho payega

Last point, Polo sells 1500 fewer and vento sells 1500 more MoM. Facelift has poached few customers from polo

[simplyself]

Zest may have settled for an 1800-2000 per month. Sad, because it is quite good in its segment. Tata's past seems to have caught up with it. Irony is, it is segment - best.

[vkarthikvkn]

It would be interesting to get the Petrol Vs Diesel split up.

I have a 2015 City, and though the SA mentioned that the Diesel is selling in good numbers, I have a suspicion that the petrol version is the one that is helping the City pull away in its segment.

That said, the arrogance of the Honda SAs might eventually pull it down.

The ascendancy of the Dzire was long coming. I have always found it (inspite of the ugly boot) to be the most practical of the smaller cars in the Maruti lot (closely followed by the Wagon R). Frankly, except for the price, I do not see anything in the Alto. The Indian consumer is hopefully waking up to the same thoughts.

I am also happy to see the old war horse Wagon R still plugging away. A thoroughly competent family car which deserves its position.

At this rate, even a fish cart with the Suzuki logo in front will ride to the top of the charts.

[manpreet.chadha]

I wonder how brands like Chevrolet & Fiat are going to sustain in the long run. They are merely adding to their losses.

Mahindra, once a comfortable third in the industry, is struggling to maintain it's position. With Jazz, Honda might be able to strengthen their position a bit. S101 for Mahindra is perhaps the only option in the near future. But by the sheer disappointment caused by Xylo and Quanto, I don't have high hopes.

Ford must be having high hopes with Aspire, but I suppose, customers of C1 segment rely more on VFM and A.S.S. Ford has a long way to go in the very departments.

Maruti is finally showing decent numbers in the C2 segment. After failures like Baleno, Ciaz has somehow shown a slight change in the mind-set of the C2 segment customers. Perhaps, this is the time for Maruti to cash in and go all guns blazing in the very segment.

Tata, Ta-Ta. I seriously never had high hopes with Zest and Bolt. It is not that they are bad in some way. One of my friends owns a Zest and I was pretty impressed. But its Tata. Indian customers still are not over their TAXI image. Zest definitely is a 5000 numbers car and bolt (with better pricing) could have been the same. But with Tata branding, it had to happen. Why can't they introduce a different brand all together and position it differently?

[Sherlocked]

Shocked to see that Bolt which is an advanced and improved version of the Indica and Vista still sells way less than the two combined. Even the Zest sells less than Indigo+Manza
For Bolt I can blame the poor pricing but for Zest?

Tata has many things going against them. Poor brand image, dubious dealers, unreliable cars (as per what the owners say in my circle).

What baffles me most is that they are still not coming up with a car which is not based on one of their early offerings. They are still improving upon the Nano, Indica platform and the Safari. Of these three, I only expect Safari to have some good numbers but alas even that is not happening.

Feature wise aside, Zest has never impressed me with its looks. The side profile with the short boot IMO looks even more funnier than the Dzire (No offence to the owners of either of these cars).

They should bring a car which is based on an entirely new concept instead of working and working and then again reworking on the Nano. That concept has failed why couldn't they accept and move on.

[MSC]

It is really hurting to see nice and accomplished products like Tata Bolt and Tata Zest performing so bad. Both the cars are miles ahead of their predecessors. Despite being better in every possible way,both have failed to shake off the poor image Tata cars. Some ridiculously pricing strategy not helping in any way.
Also, the old horse Hyundai Santro Xing is missing from charts from past few months. Has it been officially sidelined or still in production?

[pranjal1984]

Hyundai had officially discontinued the Santro a few months back.

[Theyota]

I have to say, the average Indian automotive market is really crazy! I do not understand why Swift Dzire sells 20K+ and every other car in the same segment sells 4K or less. This is one hell of a herd mentality. This is a classic case of market where customers are ignorant of the product they are buying and therefore risk averse.

Last month I was in India and my 70+ year old father wanted to replace his old Alto. He assigned me the task of finding the right car for him in the two weeks that I was there. His primary requirements were it must be small hatchback, reliable and easy to operate. I added one additional requirement to it, it must have at the least air bags and ABS as safety features. I visited every dealer in my city who had a car in the "Swift" segment. Except Toyota, every other dealer had sales personnel who were borderline idiots (including Maruti). Toyota had only ladies who did not even know how to drive (I checked with them) in their sales staff, but surprisingly they were the most knowledgeable and professional sales personnel in my city. Maruti showroom was like a vegetable market. I ended up selecting a Liva for various reasons and my father bought it. What I am trying to say is, every other car manufacturer in India has an insane amount of home work to do if they want to change the herd mentality of the Indian customer and take market share from Maruti. It is also not easy when your frontline sales/service guy is 99% of times a guy who has never owned a car.

Coming back to my father's replaced Alto, it had to be sold now because of the new Liva in the house. My mom asked how much could they sell it for, I stepped in and said if you get 60-70K rupees, give it away happily. I said what I said because the car was 8 years old with about 90K kilometers driven in mix of city and rural Karnataka roads including to farms occasionally. To me it was a rickety old tin can. A week later I was back in China and I get a phone call from my Mom indicating the Alto was sold for 155K. The first thing that came to my mind was, you ripped some poor guy off . Then she said, within two days of being on the block for sale, 4 people came to look at it and all offered between 130-135K and my father was about to give it away, she stepped in and jacked the price up by 20K (she is a hard bargainer) and one guy took the offer and bought it. So in my mind it reinforced my assumption that people in India are unreasonably crazy about Maruti cars, irrespective of whether it is an old rickety tin can or a new corrugated box.

[balajisv]

Originally Posted by Theyota

I have to say, the average Indian automotive market is really crazy! I do not understand why Swift Dizire sells 20K+ and every other car in the same segment sells 4K or less. This is one hell of a heard mentality. This is a classic case of market were customers are ignorant of the product they are buying and therefore risk averse.

The first thing that came to my mind was, you ripped some poor guy off

Lol! That's the hard/herd reality of Indian car market.

Most of the buyers are 'resale conscious' and eventually end up compromising!
I sold my 55k run, 6.5 year Swift VDi for 3.5 lacs in December 2014. I had to check about buying it back in March 2015, as one of my friends expressed his interest in buying my car. The owner quoted 3.8 lacs, non negotiable!!!

By selling 20K units, DZire is a sales topper, but not necessarily a top product in the segment.
Xcent, Zest and upcoming Ford Aspire are great products whose sales potential is way higher. But, alas! it's India!

[Prithwitheraj]

IMHO the main issue why the competent cars which are not from maruti stable are not gaining pace is just because of Indian mentality. Whatever features it may have and whatever quality those may have Indians will go for maruti, probably this is only a place where people book a car without even a test drive just by listening to Sharma Ji or Aggarwal ji. I honestly think this is mainly as because peoples less knowledge of cars and features. A normal person or first time buyer doesn't have no idea of ABS or Other technical terms like EBD CSC etc. Word of mouth is always the best marketing option and maruti have earned it over years hats off to them.

IMO zest at least is not flop. Zest and Bolt are start of the new dimensions of TML and even around 2k sales is good enough. If TML satisfies all these owners their next offerings will have the best marketing - words of mouth. TML has just started and it will take some more launches and satisfied customers to end market dominance of Maruti. They are definitely on right track and I firmly believe if stayed on this path they will conquer back the market.

Just one example in FB zest owners group which haves around 4k members a max of 10-15 members are complaining about their zest rest are very happy and proud from mileage end (revt owners getting 15-20 mileage ) as well as feature and comfort end. These happy customers would be contributing to future TML sales.

[romeomidhun]

Originally Posted by Prithwitheraj

... to end market dominance of Maruti.

Hearing it everytime a new launch is being happened. But nothing happens. Even Hyundai, coming in India as early as 1998, sells just 1/3 of Marutis.

It takes a lot to be a Maruti. You can crib about it as herd mentality, praise all other manufacturers (including Tata, whose niggles are not yet over!), go with the other manufacturers because of frustration...

[JD1]

"Herd mentality", "word of mouth", "resale" could actually translate into "reliable", "cheap to maintain","fuel efficient" - As many have pointed out in this thread (and every month during sales analysis), many owners (or maybe even majority of them) may not be that much interested in enthusiastic driving or fancy features (like ACC, push/start button) but want their hard earned money on a reliable car which will give trouble free ownership for full term (or atleast few years), be cheap to maintain and be fuel efficient. That is what Maruti targets (and now Honda is doing the same with Jazz diesel fuel efficiency) hence the vehicles have high resale and good word of mouth. One post above talks of selling an 8 year alto easily and similarly one of my friend's age-old M800 got sold within 15 minutes of posting on OLX. No wonder most car buyers prefer Maruti to be on safe side. Can you think of buying a 8 or 10 year old VW in an instant? Or for that matter selling your 8/10 year old VW at a decent price (or even higher than what you expected) within 15 minutes or few hours?

To me this feels like deja-vu since I was in US for a considerable time and for our desi junta it was either Toyota or Honda. When I bought a used VW Passat, all my friends frowned upon me why I did not go for a T/H badge car! Reliability and resale (since eventually we had to sell our car when we relocated back to India) were 2 factors why T/H badge is the default choice for desis in US. My next car was eventually a used Toyota Camry and while Passat was a white elephant when it comes to maintenance, I loved driving it and Camry drive was no match to Passat's ! Sorry for going little off topic but I think I understand Indians fascination to Maruti. We are ready to sacrifice pleasure of driving or ready to get short changed on features since our decisions could be influenced not by present but future (resale, cost of ownership etc)!

Hats off to Dzire and Maruti for consistent performance. My wife owns Maruti stock and she is happy everytime the results (or this monthly data) comes up We own Hyundai car but have invested in Maruti stock

A friend is recently looking for an AT car with dual airbags and Brio/Micra is the minimum that he has to start his search with. It's indeed sorry state of affairs that Maruti being a leader is not serious about safety+AT combination in their entire range (Celerio AMT has only driver airbag). I don't believe they will be serious till there is compulsion. Hope the new report that came out today about our deadly roads propels the government to take Road safety on priority basis.

[Shiwik]

It is quite interesting to see a majority off the folks encouraging tata for their products and wishing them well to get to better numbers. However in this forum, even if 5% of the folks were promoting Tata then we should see better numbers in their sales.

I for one owned an innova for 7 years and 100k kms (absolutely fuss free) before i moved to the new tata aria last year. I just finished my first service last week and i can confirm, it has been absolutely fuss free. I have also gotten a great level of attention from across dealers in Bangalore and tata. I have not had the need to go to the service station out-of-cycle even once and have closed close to 15k so far. Unfortunately this product has not sold as much as it is worth. Way better than the innova on several counts (engine, drivability, comfort, nvh, fuel efficiency etc). While the Innova has not let me down even once, so has the tata so far. I will continue to keep feeding this forum with my ownership experience periodically.

BTW, i was checking out the zest during my service visit for my aria, and i must admit, it was extremely well built compared to competition. I tried the Harman music system and I would strongly encourage everyone to try it out once. I personally felt it is simple brilliant and the sound quality was something i have never heard before in an automobile (probably it is just the outdated me).

[Prithwitheraj]

Originally Posted by romeomidhun

It takes a lot to be a Maruti. You can crib about it as herd mentality, praise all other manufacturers (including Tata, whose niggles are not yet over!), go with the other manufacturers because of frustration...

As I said "hats off to Maruti" yes others have a long way to go before they catch up and yes IMO TML is heading the right direction with providing better features including safety in lesser prices but in my 7 months ownership it never seemed to any one that the car looks /feel cheap.

Now if they can delight these customers from ASS point of view and spares point of views as well they do have winning recipe. The TML = truck perception is going to change but it will require time. And as far as I know the price sensitivity of Indian market once it is established that TML products are not only VFM, dependable as well they are gonna flock there instead. In that scenario Maruti will have to give more safety and features along with the reliable cheap to maintain placement which would be win win for Indian consumers as well.

As far as niggles are concerned even the topper dezire also has its own share (people even calls it rattle snake)- not going into that part.

Every automobile will have its share of issues in its lifetime what it boils down to is frequency and how much less headache (from monetary and availability of parts and ASS) a product has in its ownership.
Maruti really excels in this area currently and thus gets away with selling ages old models with minimal changes as facelifts.

[rrsteer]

For a manufacturer what matters is absolute numbers, but for gauging an appeal of a car for the average public, maybe we should look at cars sold per dealer of a brand. It is quite telling that even with a vast dealership network and probably government support (I see many Ciaz's with GoI undertaking sticker), Maruti isn't able to move the ciaz as fast as a City.