Team-BHP - Baleno and Esteem Sales going down

Yesterday's ET says that Maruti has reported a decrease in sales of Baleno and Esteem, YOY for Dec.

With more onslaughts expected from BMW and others will Maruti be able to sustain these brands or will Maruti redefine its strategy nad confine it self to the small cars?

BMW and Maruti are not competitors - they're at opposite ends of the pecking order. Having clearly realized the competitive situation that they find themselves in, Maruti has now started to refresh their model range. Whether Maruti will switch to being more proactive than reactive remains to be seen.

It was fairly predictable for the Baleno, but I'd like to know the reasons for the Esteems downfall. Is it the entire segment, or an esteem-specific situation. Last I heard was the Esteem doing darn strong numbers.

I think this is a healthy trend.. With the expected new car launches in a similar price bracket, this was bound to happen!

Especially given that the Baleno is off production now..

Hope 2007 is a year where the Indian consumer gets a chance to make some informed and better car choices than before!

Also, hope this is the beginning of an era where older model cars can be serviced and maintained by car owners without much hassle. New car launches is cool.. but, being able to drive old cars without service issues is cooler!

The individual sales figures were not published in ET for Baleno and Esteem. Put together the numbers for Dec06 was less than Dec05. Should be because the decrease in baleno sales more than offset the increase in Esteem sales.

BMW vs Maruti, never saw that coming. just kidding ravradha. but more products on street from other companies will hurt maruti. baleno is an old product now, so they need a replacement for it. and if baleno is old then esteem is prehistoric so it just needs to be phased out as they have swift in esteems price range and why put 2 of your own cars against each other(bad for sales number and makes other companies look better than they would look if they were selling more number of one product.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ravradha (Post 346671)

BMW competing with Maruti esteem and baleno... lol:

Baleno sales are gonna falll... production has almost stopped, and new one is almost here... Esteem is getting really old... But, the gem of an engine is what is keeping it going...

Baleno on- road prices have fallen to just over 20-30k over the esteem... 5.6L (on road) to be exact, here... if you ever wanted a baleno, its a steal now...

Well, we dont know the breakdown between these 2 but the two combined just above 2K is definitely less. Esteem by itself was doing this much..
The Baleno sales are expectedly down since its off production. In any case, lets hope there is some news on the Esteem replacement too!

Yeh to hona hi tha ...

I remember in Dec'05 when i cancelled by Baleno booking for this reason and passed on this info about Baleno some people were doubting me and had knives out for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GTO (Post 346693)

Probably the repositioning of Flair and the Accent which are now aimed squarely at Esteem. The difference in EMI is minimal and the former are also now proven products and hence the customer ignores the Esteem.

I had already posted this somewhere else,the swift is making more sense to consumers than the esteem.Esteem now is only for those who are absolutely hellbent on having a car with a boot[sedan].Otherwise the swift makes more sense.

The comfort of owning a hatch in todays city traffic,lack of parking space etc is also not helping the esteems cause or for that matter all the economy segment sedans[notice sales of accent and other cars in this segment too has fallen ].People actually dont mind paying a premium for hatches nowadays for this same very matter.I know of a person who had a budget of 10 lakhs but ended up with a getz only because of bangalore traffic conditions.