"New Octavia - to be launched in early 2005"
Thats what the cover of Autocar India shouts out to readers this month. Ofcourse, reading his would lead you and me to believe that the new look Octavia will be launched by March 2005. To what extent is this true?
Well, the postman that brought me this months issue of ACI also brought me the official Skoda India newsletter. Hmmm...nice coincidence if you ask me!
Glancing through the newsletter, I read an article about the new Octavia and its success in the European market. Apparently, the New octavia has been a huge success forcing Skoda to revise their projected sales figures of 40,000 car per annum (not very high IMO). Thats not the point of this thread though.
The Article went on to say that delivery of the New Octi has not yet reached all markets in the EU yet as production has still not reached capacity yet. The UK will only get this model by June 2005! Till then, they continue to sell the current Octi jsut as they do in India.
Now, I may be wrong, but if the UK will only get the new Octi in June 2005, what are the chances of that car making it into India before that? Slim to none I say.
Does ACI know that? Ofcourse they do, but it doesn't make headline news now does it? Ok, I hear you say, "whats the harm in this?"
Quite a bit actually. Once a large selling auto magazine prints wrong launch dates like this, the value of the existing model drops drastically. If I was thinking of buying a new Octi today, I would hold my purchase after reading the ACI report. Why buy a car today if its gonna be replaced within a few months right?
I experienced this same conflict when we bought our car early this year. My dad was under the impression that the new Octi would be out by December 2004! because thats what was reported in the press at the time! Its only after I showed him what the Skoda people had to say (from their website) did he decide that waiting 2 years more would be too much.
Lets hope they can be a bit more responsible when it comes to making predictions in their mags. There are a lot of people out there that base their purchse decisions on what they read in the auto magazines.
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