[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by amit

The problem again is absolutely zero marketing of the car. Fiat started with print and TV adverts for a month and after that there is nothing.

Exactly my thoughts Amit.

Fiat would have spent a LOT to sign Yuvraj as brand ambassador. But they aren't doing any justice with the money already spent. I see huge hoardings of Jazz, Ritz, i20 all over Bangalore but not a single hoarding of Linea or Punto.

Hoardings on the roads also make a lot of difference IMO.

[devarshi84]

honda is battling it out with Toyota and GM for Marketshare. So is Fiat with Ford. product cannibalization shows how bad a decision it by Honda to position its cars togather in a narrow price band and similar target market.

ICML sold 103 units to the dealers. Which means their cars are moving off the floors via the small dealership network they have.

I can see 85 units of Fusion Diesel there. So maybe we can expect 100 units of fusion in total. Also 1996 includes Fusion and Ikon petrol/Diesel. A breakdown would be nice.

In general GM has increased sales marginally but lost market share in the unde 4 mtr segment.

Hyundai is doing 2.5 times better than Tata in the hatchback segment. Shows that the old and new indica including the CS have lost favour.

Aveo Sales have hit a 8 month high. looks like the limited edition did the trick. Can they continue the upward turn? same applies to Optra diesel. looks like people were waiting for GM to come out of bankruptcy.

663 cars from HM? What's the breakup of Lancer/Ambassadors and Cedia? Surprisingly HM gained .1%.

Why is Nissan not sharing information?

[Gilead]

Originally Posted by devarshi84

Why is Nissan not sharing information?

I won't be surprised if the numbers are too embarrassing to be shared.

[1100D]

As far as the Linea sales go, the initial hype period being over, this is the time when the wait and watch customers are going to put their money on it. So it needs to build a solid reputation for itself during these times. Perhaps lower sales would probably help that cause, as attention can be given to individual attention. As far as I have heard in Calcutta, some friends are indeed getting it. Moreover historically these months have always been lean. However they need to up the marketing ante near the festive season. Its almost like planning their innings as well as optimising the money spent on advertising. Hopefully this will also help keeping the value proposition intact.

I would be worried if the sales trend and the lack of advertising continues near abouts diwali times.

1000 units of Jazz at its price point for the hatch is indeed good sales.

[lamborghini]

@ajmat: Actually, i feel that the A4 and A6 combined have sold 90 units, as the A4 is 4703mm, and the cut off is 4700 mm.
The Q5 though is smaller than 4700mm and I guess that sold 26units.

[akj53]

Among Premium Cars - total vehicles sold are 706,
Mercedes - 287 = 40.7%
BMW - 261 = 37%
Audi - 158 = 22.4%

So Mercedes has regained its pole position mainly due to 192 C class but despite the end-of-life E class. If this trend continues then Merc will improve its market share even further after the introduction new E class.

BMW appears to be king in UV segment by selling 62 vehicles against only 4 Mercs (in absence of any clarity on UV sales of Audi). Its new 7 series also outsold S class by 39 to 30 but I see it as a novelty factor. Worldwide S class leads over 7 and A8 and same may happen in India in coming months. BMW a close second in overall sales.

Audi needs to try harder. More dealers, better A.S.S. & easily available spares needed.

In Executive category Linea is sliding. FIAT needs to focus more on cars rather than cricketers. Earlier Sachin failed to lift sales so how can Yuvraj do it this time. Fiat need to spend money to improve the interior quality, long throw gearbox & pedal positioning etc., rather than on cricketers. Linea & GP both deserve more powerful engines to match their superb chasis, ride & handling. Both are heavy cars so cant compete on FE, but certainly can become as the best highway cars by having more powerful engines.

Altis (801) outsells Civic (299) and Skoda (525) again. I totalled sales figures since Sep. 2008 when Altis was introduced. Total sales Sep 2008 till July 2009 of these 3 are:-

Civic = 5307, Skoda = 5474 & winner by a huge margin is Altis = 9725.
Altis can further improve sales of its automatic by giving a 5 speed Automatic.
Skoda can improve its tally by improving its A.S.S. and eliminating horror stories. New Laura petrol deserves to sell more.

In Premium category Superb outsells Accord again by 271 to 223 and rightly so.
Honda is loosing its market share fast due to its policy of "over pricing with least features". Only its ANHC is selling strongly that too in absence of any real competition. A sure sign of customers deserting overpriced cars.
Camry sells a pathetic 9 cars due to the strange policy of Toyota of not assembling it here. If assembled locally and priced to match Superb / Accord, it can easily upset figures of both cars and may even become the segment leader.

[diabloo]

Jazz with 1037 is indeed good numbers for niche product.

Originally Posted by Minardi

Didn't we all expect Jazz to outsell Punto cos of the Honda badge? So all in all, not a bad month for Fiat!

Jazz costs a good 3 lakhs over Punto. So can't expect a higher priced product to volume numbers.

Originally Posted by devarshi84

honda is battling it out with Toyota and GM for Marketshare.

GM with Toyota/Honda? News to me. GM is in same boat as Fiat in India.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by diabloo

Jazz with 1037 is indeed good numbers for niche product.Jazz costs a good 3 lakhs over Punto. So can't expect a higher priced product to volume numbers. GM with Toyota/Honda? News to me. GM is in same boat as Fiat in India.

In fact if you look at it, it is GM which is now very close to Honda in terms of total units sold. In fact, in terms of total units, GM has beaten Honda in 6 out of the last 12 months. Of course, sales value of Honda is higher.

What is equally important for Honda is that its nearest competitor (Toyota) is now selling more units and this has happened in 4 out of 12 months ending July 2009. Corolla Altis is now outselling Civic by triple digit margins.

[devarshi84]

Originally Posted by diabloo

Jazz with 1037 is indeed good numbers for niche product.Jazz costs a good 3 lakhs over Punto. So can't expect a higher priced product to volume numbers. GM with Toyota/Honda? News to me. GM is in same boat as Fiat in India.

You need to check the marketshare my friend. Honda, Toyota and GM all have 3.3-3.4%.

[diabloo]

Originally Posted by devarshi84

You need to check the marketshare my friend. Honda, Toyota and GM all have 3.3-3.4%.

Marketshare . Ok . GM can march since they have 3L car in their repertory.

[SkyWalker]

Originally Posted by devarshi84

You need to check the marketshare my friend. Honda, Toyota and GM all have 3.3-3.4%.

Marketshare don't mean a thing unless u compare it in a segment. 3295 of them came from spark - which is a much lower segment car. Compare in the right segment - Aveo sold 253 compared to City's 3268 and Optra sold 181 compared to Civic 299 and Altis's 801. Hardly comparable numbers.

Besides if you compare that way you can say GM is better than BMW as they have a better market-share

[VahanPujari]

Originally Posted by amit

From 1600 units in March to 850 in August is a big drop. It's roughly 50% in 5 months! The problem again is absolutely zero marketing of the car.

Actually, March Car sales no.s are always inflated because of Financial Year-end & depreciation deadline. Also, remember these figures are Manufacturer sales to Dealers - Primary Sales. Some manufacturers dump more in March to meet targets whereas some can not dump cars to dealers.

If you look at ANHC, it has dropped from 6040 in Mar'09 to 3268 in July'09 - drop of 2772 cars (whopping 46%). Wish we had Verna, SX4, Fiesta separate Mar & July'09 official figures as well.

However, that said, 850 Lineas are not comfortable numbers for Fiat. Anything around 1000-1200 Lineas, Fiat would consider ok.

Reg Marketing you are spot on. For Daily & Monthly sales to tick, regular on-going marketing/ adverts are a must. Have not seen any Dealer advert for Linea/ Punto (may be Tata dealers do not have local ad budget shared with Fiat but only with Tata as dealer ads are for Tata cars only). Hoardings, leaflets, Low cost visibility is what is the order of the day for Fiat. Looking at difficulties mentioned in some threads for getting a TD for TD-car non-availability, Fiat could also give more than sufficient cars to dealers for TD which would also improve visibility on road. Last but not the least, nothing like an aggressive promo on A.S.S. e.g. free check-up of the car for anything/ any small issues backed by aggressive adverts/ leaflets/ hoarding with a probable theme of "Satisfaction Guaranteed". Though the cars are new & Fiat is already rectifying issues FoC, it would help to increase visibility & comfort.

Coming to July analysis, DZire seems to be the undisputable King in its segment. Goes to show whatever criticism hurled like ungainly looks, rattles, etc etc, customers' choice seems to be an allround package - Affordable, packed with modern Features/ equipments, backed by excellent A.S.S., who wants 1.6 engine then? Maruti has such a tight grip on understanding Indian customers' needs to the "T" & that seems to be the key to its success spanning such a long time.

[vasudeva]

The UV segment has been largely ignored so far. However, if you compare the monthly market share figures for the last 1 year or so, you will notice:
1. Huge gains for M& M.
2. Since total has to be 100%, someone has lost. That is Tata, GM, and Toyota. Toyota though seems to have made substantial gains from its lows of early 2009.

Since 1 month does not make a trend, here are the figs in market share for 2008 (Jan-Dec) and 2009 (Jan-Jul)
M&M 43.2% 56.1%
GM 7.6% 5.3%
Tata 19.9% 16.2%
Toyota 18.6% 14.9%

[akj53]

Vasudeva: Any info on Toyota Land Cruiser sales?

[Pragmites]

Originally Posted by VahanPujari

A
However, that said, 850 Lineas are not comfortable numbers for Fiat. Anything around 1000-1200 Lineas, Fiat would consider ok.

Reg Marketing you are spot on. For Daily & Monthly sales to tick, regular on-going marketing/ adverts are a must. Have not seen any Dealer advert for Linea/ Punto (may be Tata dealers do not have local ad budget shared with Fiat but only with Tata as dealer ads are for Tata cars only). Hoardings, leaflets, Low cost visibility is what is the order of the day for Fiat. Looking at difficulties mentioned in some threads for getting a TD for TD-car non-availability, Fiat could also give more than sufficient cars to dealers for TD which would also improve visibility on road. Last but not the least, nothing like an aggressive promo on A.S.S. e.g. free check-up of the car for anything/ any small issues backed by aggressive adverts/ leaflets/ hoarding with a probable theme of "Satisfaction Guaranteed". Though the cars are new & Fiat is already rectifying issues FoC, it would help to increase visibility & comfort.

I have seen ads of Pandit Auto in Pune, for the Linea, admittedly few and far between.
I am also posting in a new thread my attempts at getting a Linea test drive