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-   -   Maruti Invicto | Re-badged Innova Hycross (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/258210-maruti-invicto-re-badged-innova-hycross-17.html)

If you really value your money and are looking to buy a 7 seater in this budget, please put your money on Toyota Hycross / Mahindra XUV700 / ScorpioN. Each of these three have their pluses and minuses. But they are really VFM for what they offer. All three have a waiting period of more than a year with a combined backlog of about 250,000 bookings. A quarter million people waiting in a queue for a year to put USD 9 billion into three cars is something unheard in India. Pls trust their collective wisdom, as for many of them this is not their first car in this segment.

Regarding your point 8 (resale value) and the point about total cost of ownership, I will need to share my personal experience. I purchased my Tata Manza AuraABS Safire (petrol) in 2011 for Rs 6.75 lacs and sold it in 2020 for Rs 75,000. I could not get rid of it earlier because of its abysmal resale value. And I was spending Rs 35,000- 40,000 annually maintaining it (apart from insurance and fuel costs; the vehicle was giving me 9 - 9.5 kmpl in city and 13 kmpl on highways). The underpowered fuel guzzler was a pain to drive in the city. The Hexa owners in this forum can shed some light about the resale value they are getting for their car. I don't expect Safari resale experience to be very different compared to Hexa

And I really can't understand how a 5 year warranty will reduce average duration of ownership and how that is a good thing...:confused:

Toyota hiked Innova Hycross prices today by 27000 on the same day of Invicto launch, I think they are trying to position Hycross as a premium product just my making it more expensive.
Coincidence or planned Strategy?

That's exactly what is the strategy of TOYOTA. They want to project INNOVA as a premium pricy brand. This one of the reasons why INVICTO is missing out on basic necessary features to keep the low initial cost on paper as compared to INNOVA HYCROSS. This is well-planned so that INNOVA does not lose out in this race :)

People who can buy a FORTUNER at a premium just because of its road presence and TOYOTA name, will buy the INNOVA HYCROSS over the INVICTO thereby carrying the legacy of TOYOTA as a more premium overall brand !

Along with the hike they can simply stop supporting yellow board registrations and direct them to a Nexa dealership and the cabbies will just flock towards it. Everyday I see more yellow board hycross than white board in Bangalore. Doing this will be a win win for Toyota as well as Maruti. Toyota can retain their premium tag and cater to private buyers, while Maruti gets their share of the numbers and still Toyota will make money out of the deal :D This model sharing strategy is just brilliant.

Not giving the re-launched CRYSTA with an AT gearbox even in their top ZX trim is also a part of their strategy to promote Hycross. So, just imagine a brand which is ready to sacrifice Crysta AT sale-figures to promote their brand-new Hybrid car! How can they miss to create a "more premium" hype with Hycross as compared to Invicto ? This is their "strategy" That is why Hycross prices are increased on the same day of Invicto launch.

Looks like I have offended few of my fellow bhpians with this post so apologies for the same first. Second, I am not generalizing anything here. It's just an opinion just like any other there has ever been.

Also I am not comparing Safari with Innova, both these cars have their fan followings. Every sale is based on a set of some or the other use case(s). Tomorrow if I have a kind of money that can buy a Hycross, I would go for the same (I have owned a Toyota before and I understand the brand well however from a non Indian market).

Here I am talking strictly about the pricing that Maruti has brought for Invicto (that everyone here knows will be increased at the time of invoicing) followed by the price increase announcement by Toyota for Hycross (these things have been going unsupervised/uncontrolled and there doesn't seem to be a watchdog for the same).

'Fan Following' is not always proportional to the brand loyalty. The brand loyalty depends upon a lot of factors (the greatest being the time a particular brand plays and stays in the market). It can also change due to a lot of factors and we have examples of people moving from Toyota to Ford, Maruti to Hyundai/Kia and vice versa and at some point of time it will change again in the coming days with the portfolio that Tata has been creating lately.


Now for someone who just needs a 6/7 seater, a strong puller for those family trips and some relevant safety features (like 6 airbags to ask the minimum) why should I pay more money just because it's a rebadged Toyota and why should I not go for a brand like Tata (there are happy and sad stories at both ends) just because there were few owners who were not happy with the same.

Again no offences and apologies to the Hycross/Innova/Maruti/XUV700 Owners (I myself own the 2022 Alpha AT XL6) but for whatever reason I said Safari as compared to Toyota Twins (again no offense), I would still be reluctant to put money in a product that is very new to the newly created hybrid market (no proof in India what will happen to a hybrid vehicle after few years of ownership) as supposed to an already established diesel car market keeping the fuel economy aside.

We have news of people cancelling their Invicto booking pouring in. May be when we have the 'Cancellation' data readily available along with the 'Booking' data would we get the true picture of 'Brand Loyalty'. If the only reason people are switching to cars other than Hycross (or Invicto in the near future) just because other 6/7 seaters are available faster (with least amount of waiting), how do we justify 'brand loyalty'.

It's a very dynamic market (should now be renamed as FMAG fast moving automobile goods :-)) so the factors or opinions that were relevant few years back are no more relevant now and that is why every purchase and the corresponding opinion seems to be justified.

Cheers and safe driving!

Tata Safari and XUV 700 seems more VFm than Invicto now. There is no denying thefact that this is Maruti Suzuki's foray in to the luxury space.My personal opinion is that Maruti has got it wrong with the variants and pricing. Come on, you cannot do cost cutting on a car that costs twice as the Ertiga. Even Baleno seems well equipped compared to Invicto

I wonder if MS missed the trick by not introducing the alpha+ variant with 8 seater configurations. It would have actually provided a viable option for buyers looking for those premium features alongwith a rear bench seat.

Query.
So how does this badge engineering work?
It will be produced at Toyotas assembly line, but will it have same metal sheet thickness, chassis or build quality as Hycross?

Or one may see lower quality components, metal sheet etc used here for Invicto?

Thanks!

First Look video:

Maruti Suzuki Invicto - Maruti’s most premium car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKwPYcPqKVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIAE...nel=BunnyPunia

I never bothered to check an Innova Hycross before, as I don’t like MPVs or for that matter most of the SUVs. But recently one guy from our apartment picked a Hycross and I have say it does have road presence. It’s big and spacious and I am not surprised why people are going for it. Very good as a family car. Infact my Octavia was looking small infront of it. And there are still a lot of people in India who will not buy anything other than a Maruti. So I won’t be surprised if Invicto does some real good numbers.
Will I buy one? Definitely No, for the reason mentioned in the beginning. But I feel this Toyota/Maruti duo is definitely VFM for the targeted customers.

Badge Engineering is a many decades old concept. I have seen and driven the Ritz / Wagon R as Opel and Vauxhall in Europe. The Nissan Serena is still being sold as Suzuki Landy in Japan. It is a cheap and inexpensive way of getting market share and not really profits. The advantage it gives to a comparitively miniscule player (as compared to TATA/Mahindra Groups, Toyota Group etc) like Suzuki is:
1) A taste of handling premium(relatively) customers and their shenanigans
2) It allows them to launch their next vehicles below this price and position them and charge less than flagship models, but still at a substantial premium.

I don't think Suzuki has any illusion that they will be able to sell more than a few hundreds, at max, every month. I don't think this has any advantage whatsoever to Toyota but after getting a very decent market share in India via Suzuki partnership, I think Toyota would find it somehow palatable.

The vehicles would be exactly similar in terms of components used, build quality etc. Specs would of course be a mish mash with Toyota calling the shots wrt positioning and volume allocation.

Should've gone the whole hog and re-badged a Lexus Import. It'd looked less obvious and would've taken Maruti's premium dreams to the stratosphere!

So Maruti Suzuki is paving way for the 7 seater based on the Grand Vitara. When can this be expected to be launched?

Highly dependent on the target audience, prices.

Given the fact that both are sold in India, they will have the same specification on most things apart from visual differentiators, like type of upholstery, lights, dashboard, meters etc. Under the skin, it will be exactly the same. Both of these are made at the Toyota plant.

No, the numbers are too low. In future, maybe where something is produced exclusively for Maruti, perhaps.


This initiative was started by Toyota and not Maruti most likely. Remember, Toyota had a completely new unused plant after Live Twins were taken off production (Euro6) and Toyota didn't have any model from the global lineup to fill 10-20 Lac space. Maruti engineers must have helped them immensely in breaking this market. It was probably the efforts of Maruti that Toyota is getting so successful in small cars here.

Remember, manufacturing a good vehicle with strong engineering is not the only reason to be successful. It would help if you had a very good hold of customer understanding. Even today, Grand Vitara can be had in stocks in most top trims, but Toyota struggles with deliveries of hybrid or petrol-only variants depending on the time. Until March they had enough hybrids and now nothing in Hyryder. They still can't predict the true demand. Maruti does a much better job, and with the high number of channels, it's not difficult to understand.

It's a win-win for both. The reason why they joined hands in the first place. Toyota can swallow Suzuki in less than a day worldwide but most Japanese companies treat their countrymen and companies first (Nippon first).


Grand Vitara is made by Toyota, only petrol engine comes from Maruti. What Maruti will be looking at is the enhancement of Ertiga/ XL-6 platform. I don't think Toyota will give them the Innova platform.


Lexus already sells that as an RX, starting at 95 Lac :) Maybe Maruti could have sold each to their principal dealership owners, but that will be about it. Let's stay on the subject here.