[knrn]

This thread was bound to come up. It was interesting reading all the posts. I was at the Mahindra dealership yesterday evening. Was checking out the Xuv 500 W3. Currently Mahindra is offering a discount of 70,000 on all variants. The SA told me that if I wait till January or February next year there might be some bigger discounts available. So there actually might be some truth in this concept of the FIRE Sale that we are discussing.

My vote now definitely to wait for the FIRE sale before taking the plunge.

[charanreddy]

I think time is soon coming up for a paradigm shift from the ICEs.. Having bought my Diesel Nexon last year, I am in no hurry, but definitely it does not make sense to plonk in bug bucks now given the uncertainty around regulations. Time is soon coming for a greener way to travel with more dependency on electric vehicles and for our country to generate cleaner energy.. I will wait for atleast 5 years or more and then think of my next purchase and I wont be surprised if it is an electric.

[Carpainter]

Although I'm not in the market to buy a new ride right now, I like the fact that the market is going through a correction. It was long overdue. I have been saying it for a long time that car prices are going north for almost no reason at all. Yes they say there is rupee depreciation and higher input cost, higher GST blah blah blah but these alone can't be a reason for a car that used to be 10 Lakh 6-7 years ago now cost 20 Lakh. That is seriously inflated pricing. Think about it, a 3 series,A4 that was 30 lakh on road not so long ago is now 40+ lakh ex showroom. What has really changed in these cars apart from regular updates and generation change. If every new generation has to come with an increased price tag then 10 years from now an Alto will cost 10 Lakh. That would be serious overpricing keeping in mind the time value of money. Add to that general income of a regular Joe hasn't increased to that degree and recently there is a slowdown in Indian economy in general.


BS6 may be a factor in this but not a big factor. Because after BS6 car makers will have another excuse to increase prices once again. And I don't think somebody who needs a car now will wait for EVs as there is still a long way to go before they become mainstream.

[gauravdgr8]

In July when I was window shopping for changing my wife's Nano, Hyundai, Tata and Maruti kept competing with each other.

Maruti lost in the battle as Celerio didn't offer much compared to Tiago and i10. Hyundai initially have a meagre price for the Nano, almost 50% lower than what Tata offered and the decision was made to buy the Tiago.

During the follow up call by Hyundai, when I told them on their face that you are buying a car and not an Activa, they agreed to match Tata's offer.

At the end, Tata gave 3 year insurance, 2 year extended warranty, Gold AMC for a year, waived the logistics, free fastag, free accessories worth Rs: 5400, corporate discount worth 3k. In all, discounts worth 55-60k.

What I paid was Car's ex-showromm cost and the registration cost. Couldn't ask for more and bought the car, although was only window shopping.

[i74js]

Whatever optimization in production may happen, several brands will have unsold inventory at the beginning of the next calendar year resulting in massive discounts the way we have witnessed for two wheeler last year.

Yes, I do wish to take a plunge at a great price yet I am not sure if I will actually get what I want. As of now its keeping fingers crossed.

Cheers

[tarik.arora]

I do believe that discounts will increase in the next 2-3 months on BS-IV inventory. Point is, OEMs were well prepared this time to migrate to BS-VI without much inventory on hand but the current unexpected market crash has caught everyone by surprise.

I am not saying that no one saw the decline coming, but 30% was not expected. Small and marginal players will have a lot of stock left. For those who think that OEMs will adjust BS-IV production or prepone BS-VI production, things on the shop floor are not as easy as they look. A model run-out is planned 6-8 months in advance to manage suppliers, supply contracts, and inventory (both parts and finished goods).

[Vikram_agg]

Is anybody aware of deep discounts on Mercedes Benz GLS or BMW X5. Recently a friend's friend got a discount of believe it or not 37 lacs on ex showroom of 740Li. I am also fast approaching the time to change my father's Q7 but this slow down and the BSVI implementation has forced me to hold off on it for a better deal.
March 2020 any case would be a good time to buy. Best time to get deals, also I believe the GLS is going to be updated in 2020 so discounts on it should be through the roof, hopefully.

Does anyone have any information regarding this? Thanks in advance.

[Rahul Rao]

Originally Posted by AutoSphere

+1 Absolutely and I believe the Hexa is more VFM than the Crysta.

Maybe a bit OT, but the other points to consider is the increase in traffic, lack of parking and the revised RTO penalties. Ola/Uber make much more sense now.

To me they do not. I am based in Pune, and have to visit companies in industrial parks situated 30 to 70 km from Pune. At least once a month I have to go to smaller industrial towns 250 to 400 km in the interior where no one has even heard about OLA and Uber.
In this region Innova is the great leveler, it may be a rich mans second car or something a poor salesman has purchased on a 7 year loan whose emi consumes half his salary, with a plan to use for 15 years, or something a joint family has pooled to buy.
Before Innova this place was held by the Sumo, and people were eager about the Hexa, but Tata attitude and not the product is killing it.



Rahul

[heydj]

Car industry if not today then in future will be in deep trouble. In my view its a dying industry. Most major cities worldwide are already choked with traffick and no space for more cars.

In few decades I dont think car industry will be way it is, instead major consolidations.

The golden era of muscle cars or powerful cars with the joy of manually changing gears and feeling the grunt of the engine is coming to an end.

Waiting it out to buy my dream car/SUV by 2020 as in coming decade I see car ownership going through major changes.

Car industry should see writing on the wall and plan for comming 20-30 years as this slowdown of 2019 is nothing, a minor blip in comparison to times that are around the corner.

[mallhi]

Voted for - "I can't wait. I need my car now."

Was pretty confused about the BS-VI norms coming into effect in 2020 but got a half-decent discount and picked up a Jeep Compass Petrol AT last month.

[aman-bh]

Originally Posted by Vikram_agg

Is anybody aware of deep discounts on Mercedes Benz GLS or BMW X5. Recently a friend's friend got a discount of believe it or not 37 lacs on ex showroom of 740Li. I am also fast approaching the time to change my father's Q7 but this slow down and the BSVI implementation has forced me to hold off on it for a better deal.
March 2020 any case would be a good time to buy. Best time to get deals, also I believe the GLS is going to be updated in 2020 so discounts on it should be through the roof, hopefully.

Does anyone have any information regarding this? Thanks in advance.

GLS is selling with about 10L discount now, which brings the price to around 77L ex-showroom.

You can expect an X5 to cost 3-4 lakhs more than that as it's a newly launched car.

[Vikram_agg]

Originally Posted by aman-bh

GLS is selling with about 10L discount now, which brings the price to around 77L ex-showroom.

You can expect an X5 to cost 3-4 lakhs more than that as it's a newly launched car.

The ex showroom for X5 30d is already 73lakhs. Plus I think it should be lesser than GLS because GLS is a 7 seater and X5 is not. I mean they both are in different segments.
Well I am going to wait for some more time, I believe better discounts can be expected if not then the new GLS is anyway around the corner. If one has to pay full price then why not for the new model.

[ringoism]

Originally Posted by hellmet

Love your logic and attitude. Go cycle!

Our family owns a 20yr old M800 and the only reason we've been looking to replace it is the lack of an A/C.... The nail in the coffin is the fact that Ola and Uber have made cars available at the touch of a virtual button. New car? Meh.

Originally Posted by cool_dube

Could not agree more! This was inevitable and auto industry has no one but itself to blame. It was only a matter of time before an average Indian car buyer realized that he is being taken for a royal ride. There is a limit to selling bling gizmos on wheels at atrocious prices!

Eh, wait... Isn't T-Bhp full of commentators crying for all the latest safety/convenience features, bemoaning that their would-be vehicle of choice is "underpowered" (sedan less than 100bhp, SUV less than 150)? Etc, etc? Automakers gave the majority of the people what they said they wanted. I was pretty well crucified in one thread (along with Maruti's chief) when I questioned the necessity of mandating ABS (I seem to remember arguing that all this comes at a real cost)! Add to all these the R&D investment / burden of automakers re: ever cleaner-running vehicles, and the inevitable reality starts to dawn, as it did earlier in the U.S. and elsewhere: Cars cannot be cheap anymore. A lot of Americans would like to buy a simple vehicle, something like an Alto800 (even a Nano), or a Bolero LX 4x4 (we had our Beetles selling through the 80's, our Yugo's and early, low-end Hyundais, and simple sorts of SUV's for about a decade thereafter). You can hardly buy a car with a manual gearbox now, maybe a few heavy-duty pickups and sportscars, that's it.

But those days are gone, simple, practical cars are gone, they can't have them any more. Federal regulations have made it impossible, for one thing, and also the thing of "aspirations" and option packages (in the old days you could go down the list of options one-by-one and largely have a car built EXACTLY as you wanted it, which corporate efficiencies and government regulators no longer allow for), and above all easy credit (which in the current Indian context is not so easy anymore). So here we have an industry which developed its product offerings in light of the reigning debt/EMI-culture, which "we the people" drove ourselves into. That culture / economic paradigm has come into question, people can't as easily take on debts buying vehicles they can scarcely (or not) afford, and here we are.

I suppose it's all for the best, being that a lot of folks are losing interest in owning cars anyway, the planet would be better off if the car population quit growing or even decreased. I see that Hero is now offering an e-cycle off-the-shelf, it's rs18,000 here locally in H.P. and for a lot of people, something like that is just going to save a ton of money and be pretty convenient as it concerns parking, maintenance, etc. If I didn't have to carry my kids and didn't so often dream of the next journey up over the passes, I'd be just about ready to give up one of the bikes for one.

-Eric

[pseudo_coder]

I am also amused at the rants about current prices. Have car prices increased more than the inflation rate? I don't think so. In some cases, there is significant increase in equipment list. Like, many models now come with dual airbags and ABS as standard. 5 ywars ago duster base model had zero airbags, amd cost 8 Lakh ex showroom. Costs the same now. Top Models of almost all cars come with touchscreen display with Android Auto and Carplay. Add these costs along with the effect of inflation, and the prices don't seem unreasonable to me. Compared to other countries, may be. But that was always the case.

[pseudo_coder]

How many cars have started rolling out BS6 versions, or at least have them ready? If all cars move to BS6 by Dec-Jan, then we may not see a fire sale in March.