[mroutlander]

Numbers - they do tell a lot of stories.
Numbers - they do tell you what went right and what went wrong
Numbers - they also tell you who needs to buckle up and roll up their sleeves

1. Ford - The C-SUV pioneer (in India at least) Ecosport is losing steam and how. Agreed we had a slow year-end but 2275 is a tad too low for them. This is despite having quite a few available options engine-wise and variant-wise. They have to do something before it's too late.

2. FCA - It continues it's hopeless run. Come on, FCA. At least try and compete.

3. Honda- Amaze seems to have stabilized around 5-5.5k and City probably won't go past the 4k mark unless the next iteration comes in (preferably loaded with more tech, features and a super-stylish look). It is to be seen how well is the Civic received. I personally like it (the international spec though;Indian spec might be different) but not sure if the market will. WRV sells more than Ecosport and sustaining their 3rd/4th rank in the CSUV segment

4. Jeep - They need Renegade and they need it now. Compass sales are stagnating at ~1k units

5. M&M- Marazzo's holding on to its numbers reasonably well despite the launch of Ertiga. It would be safe to call it a reasonably successful product as of now. XUV5OO and Scorpio sales have come down significantly. Are people holding out for Harrier/Styx/XUV3OO?

6. MSIL - Alto crossing 25k and turning up as India's favorite once again. Swift and Dzire are down together by around 14.6k! And Brezza is down multiple notches to sub-10k figures. Losing the aura of invincibility or just a dull month? Baleno numbers are substantially lower too - impending facelift the cause? Ciaz would take the H2 crown for C2-sedans.

7. VAG-Skoda/Renault-Nissan - Not much to talk about

8. Toyota - Their money-spinner Innova is back in the 6k territory. In a relatively dull month, Toyota couldn't have asked for more. Year-end discounts (not sure if there were any) driving the sales?

9. Tata - Nexon is doing great at 4k+ units but had expected it to cross 5k with all the newer variants and AMT options. Tiago breaks the first beads of sweat with sub-6k figures. Santro beating it is understandable. Wonder how did Kwid beat it.

10. Hyundai - Creat sales are back from the Stratosphere to the Troposphere. Santro being beaten by an older Celerio is a little surprising.

Overall, I think a lot of C-SUVs are facing the heat from the upcoming launches of Harrier/XUV3OO and later Hyundai Carlino-based CSUV (heard it was going to be named Styx)

[porsche_guy]

The most surprising thing for me in this list is the fact that the Sumo, a car that's basically older than 2 decades is the No.2 Top gainer!

[Chetan_Rao]

Though the December number may be year-end effect, Ecosport is getting way too expensive for what it offers and needs a price cut to stay competitive.

It's a great car, but at 13-15 lacs for top-end variants (BLR OTR prices), it's dangerously close to larger and better cars in a market that values bang-for-buck highly.

[amohan78]

Originally Posted by strawhat

Sad to see Ecosport and Freestyle sales falling on consecutive months. I think they are underperforming to a certain degree. Calls for a refreshed marketing and sales strategy. Aspire facelift doesn't look like a capable competitor to Dzire and Amaze. Ford should be really concerned.

Not a very encouraging situation for Ford India. The Ford Aspire has been a good facelift and has the potential to make its presence felt where Dzire has been the undisputed leader. Wonder where it is failing and why ?

The freestyle can easily boast of some mind share from Swift buyers and I am also unable to comprehend where is the lacunae that this model is also facing ?

The dual combination of Ford Aspire and Freestyle was good to at least gain some mind share from potential Swift/baleno and Dzire buyers ? What is going wrong that they are unable to do so ?

Any ideas ?

[Rajeevraj]

Seems to be a very quiet month which is not surprising considering it is the year end. But I am sure all manufacturers will be worried about 2019. Sales have been pretty much stagnating. Considering our cars/1000 people is still extremely low, one would think there is a potential for a lot of strong growth. That does not seem to be happening.

One reason is see is the way the prices have been driver upward. Very few models seem to value for money propositions. At least in my eyes

[RedStallion]

Tata Nexon sales could have gone further up if Tata had focused more on improving sales experience. They could improve upon showroom condition, technical knowledge of sales staff and their willingness to go the extra mile. Tata is going to provide an exclusive experience in sales of the Harrier, that I have read on the forum itself, which is a good sign. However, this practice should be at least followed with the Hexa and Nexon as well. They have started to campaign Nexon test results, which definitely helped with its sales. However, I am still unclear about ASS experience with Tata.

[Karthik Chandra]

Originally Posted by S.MJet

What is with Ecosport, second consecutive month with below average sales? Nexon seems to be taking the game away.

Originally Posted by strawhat

Sad to see Ecosport and Freestyle sales falling on consecutive months.

Ecosport is losing to the Nexon on the Diesel AT. Nexon has AMT on both petrol and diesel. The Nexon diesel AMT costs ~ 90K lesser than the Ecosport petrol AT. Yes, it's a proper AT, a Torque Converter vs AMT but still the value proposition is hard to ignore. The 5 star rating is icing on the cake in favour of Nexon.

With the S variants Ford has lost the pricing room for a top of the line diesel AT. Titanium Plus MT is ~ 13 lacs and a Titanium plus diesel AT will cost ~ 14 lacs which IMO is still worth it - 1.2 lacs over Nexon diesel AMT for a torque converter AT with additional safety pack (side & curtain airbags, ESP, TC, Hill Hold & BA).

Ford have the car, the engine, the transmission and the market ready, God knows why they delay. Next up Mahindra XUV 300 will further complicate things for Ford which is a good thing for us, Customers.

God bless competition

[gururajrv]

1) Deleting features helped Tata get some numbers up for Hexa? Or is it the self drive fleet orders that shows these numbers?

2) Nexon beating Ecosport is not so surprising. It’s posting healthy numbers. Whilst for us to view this sales card might be a little concerning to see it stand at 4K units, I’m sure for Tata, from a holistic standpoint, it’s helped Tata post real good growth which wasn’t possible all these years. 5 star GNCAP has also helped churn some numbers or will help it grow in the current month.

3) WagonR facelift around the corner - hence the dip.

4) Surprisingly what made Celerio grab 9k piece & made Santro see downward trend? This has affected Tiago as well. Perhaps the discounts drew more customers towards celerio?

5) Brezza coming down to 9k units?! Is it because people want 2019 stock & not 2018? No other car in this segment seem to have taken a piece of pie from its share as I see. Let’s see if my assumption is true which should show in Jan report.

Anyways like everyone said 2018 as a whole was indeed a dry & slow year for car launches and sales except for veterans who’d made their name maintain market share. Let’s see how they’ll tackle 2019!

[vsrivatsa]

As expected - the Value for Money Offering Ciaz takes the crown in the Sedan segment:
Maruti Ciaz Outsells Verna & City; Becomes Best-Selling C-Segment Sedan : URL

Here are the Final 2018 numbers for the Top 3:
Ciaz : 50,759 / Verna : 42,605 / City : 42,045

On another topic, Hyundai's move to re-introduce the Santro has paid off well and it's clocking in good sales. However, not sure if they needed to stop the Eon. Eon had the potential to continue to sell 3,000+ copies a month despite the Santro I thought.

[tarik.arora]

1) While Eco sport, Brezza and WRV dropped m-o-m, Nexon is holding its numbers in December as well. This is an achievement in itself as December is traditionally a low wholesales month.

2) High numbers for Alto are to compensate for low numbers of Wagon-r, Swift duos, Baleno and Brezza. Jan 2019 will see Maruti bouncing back with a bang. Just wait for the numbers for these models for January and you will see what the market leader does.

3) Datsun 2018 GO and GO+ are pretty decent products and they should combined be clocking 2k units at least. Worrying part for Datsun is that the new GO has eaten into redi-GO sales as the prices overlap. They were looking for incremental volumes, but the reality is different.

4) Duster m-o-m gain has to do with the supply constraints that Renault was facing earlier. I guess the situation has eased now and we will see 1,000-1,500 units from here on.

5) Ford has to do something. I have a feeling that they are not focusing on the domestic market anymore and will be happy with whatever numbers they get. Exports is what will keep them floating.

6) VW India is in deep losses (just read this news yesterday) and there product sales are not helping either. 4 years warranty/RSA/Free services is too little and too late IMO. The damage has already been done and i dont think they will be able to review their bread earners (read Polo, Ameo, Vento).

7) With Eco sport on a spiral downtrend and Nexon not able to cross the 5k number, XUV 3OO is all set to be the number 2 in the segment. Mahindra badly needs this success as XUV 5OO is down to such low numbers and only Bolero helping them.

[mxh]

The numbers again prove the wrong / deceitful methodolgy by indian car manufacturers by reporting dispatches to showrooms rather than real sales to customers. Manufacturers make less in December so we get the wrong picture of the actual sales to the customer. When will someone finally change this ridiculous rule and force manufacturers to report only real sales to the customer?

[prakash_ajp]

Originally Posted by mxh

The numbers again prove the wrong / deceitful methodolgy by indian car manufacturers by reporting dispatches to showrooms rather than real sales to customers. Manufacturers make less in December so we get the wrong picture of the actual sales to the customer. When will someone finally change this ridiculous rule and force manufacturers to report only real sales to the customer?

That's probably not possible since the manufacturers may not have a system in place to track the sales between the dealer and end customer. Besides, once in the showroom, the sales to the customer may be in various stages of sales, it might be impractical to track them.


Even it's possible, I don't think it's worth it at all. In the long run, it hardly matters.

[KiloAlpha]

Originally Posted by mxh

The numbers again prove the wrong / deceitful methodolgy by indian car manufacturers by reporting dispatches to showrooms rather than real sales to customers. Manufacturers make less in December so we get the wrong picture of the actual sales to the customer. When will someone finally change this ridiculous rule and force manufacturers to report only real sales to the customer?

This is possible, if the State Governments report on the number of new cars registered on a month-on-month basis. Our State Government Departments of Transport don't do this.
The only way is probably for someone to put in a RTI query with respective departments in every state and then publish numbers.

[tarik.arora]

Originally Posted by mxh

The numbers again prove the wrong / deceitful methodolgy by indian car manufacturers by reporting dispatches to showrooms rather than real sales to customers. Manufacturers make less in December so we get the wrong picture of the actual sales to the customer. When will someone finally change this ridiculous rule and force manufacturers to report only real sales to the customer?

You are right in your thinking but someone has rightly pointed that its too much effort without much to gain. Wholesales numbers somewhere depict the real picture only. If you take the annual data, it will more or less point towards retails only. Dealers are known to keep inventory in the range of 15-45 days (depending on brand and month) and maintain it without much fluctuation over a period of time. So whatever numbers are dispatched by the factory (wholesales), you are sure that 95% of it reflects the actual customer sales only (retails).

Also, just to let you know, OEM's do track their state wise-district wise registrations. And, a lot of OEM's share this data with each other on a goodwill basis so that everyone is aware on how the micro markets are performing. This is a very common practice.

The overall model wise numbers that we see on Team-BHP are shared by SIAM, which in turn gets it from the OEM's only. Not every OEM is willing to share the retail numbers + Dealers do a lot of frauds in retails (monthly adjustments as they say) so it wont make sense to have retail numbers from OEM's as that data will not be 100% accurate. Better have a standard format of looking at numbers which can be reported with greater accuracy, we call them wholesales!

[volkman10]

Overall Retail sales (sale of cars from Dealership to End Customer) for December-18 for all auto segments.

-Passenger Vehicle Sales was down by -7% in Dec’18 v/s Nov’18 and was -3% when compared to Dec’17.

-The PV Sales were down by 7% in FY18-19 vis-a-vis FY17-18! A much more tougher time for dealers rather than the OEMs as inventory will be high.

- 2W sales were comparatively better and showed 11% growth in Dec’18 v/s Dec’17. There was a degrowth of -18% in Dec’18 v/s same period last year.



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