[diabloo]

Originally Posted by rganeshiyer

He fell in love with the Punto (looks, space, drive) and this morning went with his dad to check out both and book them. His dad is pretty bulky and found it easier to enter the tall boy Ritz than the Punto. The deal was sealed with this one aspect.

Whats the use of looks, space or drive, if one can't get into the car comfortably? IMO, your friend & his dad bought the car which suited them.

Originally Posted by neotraveller

I have seen many people on this forum liking a Fiat product but desist from buying from "fear of unknown". If people all across India think in this manner, when will Fiat make up numbers?
What's Fiat gonna do when people are unwilling to give it a chance?

Actually Fiat is in better shape. There are many manufacturers who are worse off - such as Sonalika Motors, San Motors, and GM, Skoda in some segments. If people fear 'fear of unknown', when will these manufacturers start topping the sales chart?

Originally Posted by neotraveller

True with people who research cars like TBHPians (majority atleast).
From my experience, the average-joes always want to play-safe and go for tried and tested (mind decision)rather than picking what they like.

Why only average Joe, in fact majority of TBHP purchases are from 'safe' manufacturers.

I bought a Fiat, because I liked it after comparing all cars in the segment. And some colleagues/relatives etc were like "why you bought Fiat, din't you buy a verna/city etc" without even any knowledge of above cars!.

May be your colleagues/relatives liked Verna/City. The point is why your colleagues/relatives didn't suggest Linea. This is the point Fiat needs to ponder over.

[manish7]

IMHO, the reason for decline in Linea sales is due to -

(1) Price increase last month -- they had increased price by 15k in April but then they were offering discount + free extended warranty that nullified the hike. So you got it for same launch price. last month they not only increased price by another 10k, but also stopped discounts - the effective increase now is 25K, which is not a small amount. I could have bought Linea MJD E+ for roughly 9L OTR until last month but now it's 9.28 L OTR, Pune. I did predict decline in sales on that thread itself.

(2) Niggles - they do have some annoying niggles and people like me prefer to keep away from such cars. Their plastics are cheap and some cost cutting is making people skeptical.

(3) Poor Dealers & A.S.S. - Tata dealers are pathetic, and Fiat need to have some exclusive stores for Linea and premium cars, they can't treat C+ segment owners like Indica(b) drivers.

I think Fiat must bring down prices by at least 15k by some discounts etc (interestingly now Active version has 25K discount, guess no one is picking it) andneed to fix niggles & cost cutting issues. Most of the enthusiasts have already bought the car now, if they have to convince others - they must show consistent quality & A.S.S. for next 3-4 months before skeptics are convinced. Barring September, I see Linea settling below 1000 and if they see through this period with happy ownership experience, sales would sure pick up.

[Sawyer]

Originally Posted by rganeshiyer

He fell in love with the Punto (looks, space, drive) and this morning went with his dad to check out both and book them. His dad is pretty bulky and found it easier to enter the tall boy Ritz than the Punto. The deal was sealed with this one aspect. The indian customer has strange KPIs to buy a car. Does this mean maruti understands the Indian customer better ? I dunno !

What is strange about this? One needs to be able to enter the car without contorting oneself to use it?!
Some people think that this aspect is more important than the Fiat character, and I would not call that strange, even if I thought otherwise???!!

[naveenvenkatesh]

I see from the excel sheet that Audi sold 90 A4s, BMW sold 83 3 series and Mercedes sold 61 C class cars. And also Volkswagen India Pvt LTD sold 61 cars. Thats Passat and Jetta.Am i reading it correctly? Vasudeva?

[lamborghini]

@Naveen:
Audi sold 90 A4 and A6s.
VW sold 61 Passats, and 250-260 Jettas.

[naveenvenkatesh]

Originally Posted by lamborghini

@Naveen:
Audi sold 90 A4 and A6s.
VW sold 61 Passats, and 250-260 Jettas.

Its a bit confusing actually. I see Audi under executive with 26 units. That must be A4. 90 is under premium. So should be A6 and 42 is under Luxury so must be A8. It may include TT Coupe and R8.
61 Passats and 215 Jettas.

[naveenvenkatesh]

In the absence of expert comments by GTO , i have made an amateurish attempt in drawing inferences from the excel sheet . Following are some of my observations (Please feel free to add/modify/correct if you feel so):

The automobile industry seems to be on a role in July.Overall Sales grew by an impressive 29% YOY. This is more than 8.2% increase recorded in the month of June.
The compact hatch segment is the leader of the pack with all other segments contributing to the overall growth of the passenger car segment. However, the Utility Vehicles segment has recorded a decline of 6.6%.

Hatchbacks:

• Sales of Maruti 800 has improved with 14.7% increase MOM but is still down a massive 43.5% YOY.With sales coming in at 2798 units, it seems to loosing favor in the market fast.
• Maruti have consolidated its position in the A2 segment with an increase of 4.2% MOM and an increase of 38.3 YOY. Total sales came in at 48,115 units compared to 46,156 units in June.
• Hyundai sales are flat with a marginal increase of 0.8% MOM with 20,491 units sold in July. Thats an increase of 68.8% YOY. Seems like i20 has done very well with the diesel and A/T being launched recently.
• Sales of Tata hatches has nose dived by 16.1% MOM with 8,563 units sold compared to 10,210 units sold in the month of June. But the YOY sales is still up at 13.8%. 2475 Nanos were sold in July also.
• Fiat seems to be at 1700-1800 range with Puntos accounting for about 1600 units. The total sales are up by 17.7% MOM and jaw dropping 356% YOY. That is because Fait was selling about 300-400 cars in July '08.
• Honda Jazz sales are down a whopping 49% MOM. Honda managed to sell 1,037 units compared to 2,032 units in June.Seems like the price has caught up with this hatch faster than Honda expected. However, its too early in the race to call, with the festival season approaching, next year numbers should be intersting read.
• GM has recorded an increase of 3.8% MOM but YOY sales are down 14.8%. The increase could be mainly due to the massive discounts being doled out for Spark. They managed to sell 3,295 units compared to 3,173 units in June.
• Skoda Fabia sales improved by 88.3% MOM with 369 units sold compared to 196 units in June. However, YOY sales are still down by 38.7%.
• Ford managed to sell 85 Fusions in July compared to 58 in June with an increase of 46.6% MOM. The YOY is still down by 64%.

C Segment Sedan:

• Maruti seems to be on a role in this segment with a 49.2% growth MOM and 51.5% increase YOY. The Dzire seems like a jackpot for Maruti. Together with SX4, they managed to sell 9,101 units in July compared to 6,099 units in June.
• Tata sales are flat with a maginal decline of 0.7% MOM and down 22% YOY. Clearly, Tata needs to do something fast. May be Indigo Vista? Total sales were 3,499 units compared to 3,522 units in June.
• Honda City sales are up 39% MOM. That should bring in some cheer for Honda which saw a decline in June. YOY also up 10.9%. Jazz has not affected the city sales this month.Sales were at 3,268 units compared to 2,351 units.
• Ikon and Fiesta sales are up 14.9% MOM and 14.7% YOY. Total sales were 1,996 units compared to 1,737 units in June.
• Hyundai seems to be laggard in this seegment registering a marginal increase of 0.4% MOM and a drop of 8.1% YOY. The Verna and Accent together sold 2,658 units compared to 2,648 units in June. Verna and Accent are clearly loosing favour in the market.
• Linea sales are down 6.7% MOM with 850 units sold compared to 911 units in June. Fiat needs to do something more to entise user to buy the Linea.
• Surpise Surprise!!! HM has registered a growth of 12.9% MOM and 10.3% YOY. They managed to sell 663 units of Amby, Old Lancer and Cedia.
• GM sold 253 cars compared to 160 cars in June regristering an impressive MOM growth of 58.1%. The YOY growth was also not bad at 23.4%. Seems like the massive discounts and face lifted Aveo are brining in some customers. Optra sales are also up a massive 86.6% MOM but still down 47.4% YOY. The total number of cars come in at 181 compared to only 97 in June.
• Logan seems to be on a downward spiral. Sales are down 11.4% MOM and a massive 68.4% YOY. Renault's India stratergy has gone completely wrong.

C+ Segment:

• Totoya comtinues its good run with an increase of 12.2% MOM and an unbeliveable 1028.2% YOY! That because only 71 cars were sold in July'08 compared to 801 sold in July'09.
• Honda Civic sales are down 33.7% MOM and 45.4% YOY.Honda managed to sell on 299 cars in July compared to 451 cars in June. Clearly, all roads lead to City for potential Honda customers.
• Octavia and Laura sold together 525 cars registering a drop of 28.8% MOM and 36.7% YOY. The facelifted Laura also does not seem to be bringing in the numbers for Skoda. Clearly, they need to tidy up their after sales support.

D Segment:

• Skoda Superb outsell Honda Accord again this month with a much wider margin than last month ( 271 Superbs Vs 223 Accords). Suberb sales also grew 27.8% MOM and a huge 129.7% YOY. The new Superb clearly is a hit with the Indian market. Time will tell if these customers will continue to be happy, not just buying, but also owning and maintaining the Suberb.
• Camry sales are up 125% MOM! They sold a mere 9 cars compared to 4 last month. YOY sales are down 66.7%. Toyota needs to do something about the CBU nature of this model before sales become nil. Single digit sales must bereally embarassing for Toyota.

Luxury Cars:

• C Class again outsells the 3-series with 192 units for C class and 77 3-series.
• Audi sold 26 A4s and 90 A6s. Also, Volkswagen managed to sell 61 Passat and 215 Jetta cars.
• 39 7-series sold compared to 30 S Class. Also, Audi sold 42 cars in this segment. This is mainly A8 with very few TT Coupes and R8.

MUVs and SUVs:

• M&M sold total of 11,660 UVs in the month of July compared to 13,087 vehicles in June. This includes Xylos, Scorpios, Boleros, Commanders etc. Tata sold 2,819 UVs in July compared to 3,502. July was not a month to cheer for UV segment espacially for M&M and Tata.
• Innova sold 4,197 units in July compared to 3,649 units in June. Innova semms to be climbing back to its last year figure of about 4,500 cars a month after the initial jolt from Xylo.
• Maruti managed to sell 7,302 Omnis and Versa. Compare this to 6,890 solf previous month.This is an increase of 6% MOM and 16.8% YOY.The recent budget cut for UVs may behaving the desired affect after all.
• Safari sales is down marginally by 2.6% MOMand 9.2% YOY. Tata sold 1,727 safaris compared to 1,774 in June.
• Honda solf 30 CRVs and Maruti sold 26 GVs. Also, ICML (Rhino) managed 103 units. This is compared to Nil for both Honda and Maruti in June. Hyundai didn't sell even a single Tucson in July.
• Maruti Gypsy clocked 188 units compared to 190 in June!
• HM sold 159 Pajeros and Fold sold 65 Endeavours.
• BMW sold a 62 X3 and X5 together. However, the 3 pointed star was not so lucky. They sold only 4 M class vehicles.
• Force motors seem to be doing really badly in the UV segment. They sold only 387 units compared to 460 units in June. This Trax and Travellers both.

Thats about all.

[amit]

Originally Posted by rganeshiyer

My friend who owns a zen took me for an actual comparison between the Ritz diesel and Punto Diesel.He fell in love with the Punto (looks, space, drive) and this morning went with his dad to check out both and book them. His dad is pretty bulky and found it easier to enter the tall boy Ritz than the Punto. The deal was sealed with this one aspect. The indian customer has strange KPIs to buy a car. Does this mean maruti understands the Indian customer better ? I dunno !

It's not about Indian customer being weird. It's about personal likes. I don't like tall boys. In both my SX4 and Punto,the driver's seat is set at it's lowest postion but who knows 15 years from now if age catches up with me, I may end up liking tall boy's. About your friend, he owns a Zen so I guess his father must have had a tough time getting in and out of that car so this time round he wanted something easier. Nothing wrong with that. No car is going to be liked to by 100% of the population otherwise all billionaires would buy S class and the 7 and A8 wouldn't be existing.

I think Fiat must bring down prices by at least 15k by some discounts etc (interestingly now Active version has 25K discount, guess no one is picking it) andneed to fix niggles & cost cutting issues.

You want Fiat to stop cost cutting yet want them to reduce prices further! For the high priced competitor cars, people say quality comes at a cost. Why not the same magnamity to other manufacturer's?

Regarding lower Linea sales last month, I was at Fortune Nerul yesterday and they said 60 Fiat's were sold by them last month. About 40 of them were Punto's. The sales manager said that a few Linea Dynamic PK and Emotion buyers did switch to Punto Emotion PK so our estimate here was correct. Whether this migration to Punto from Linea will sustain is something the coming months will tell us. Regarding August, the guy said sales have picked up and the trend is far better in August then July but then it' festival season so that was expected.

When I was there yesterday, 4 Punto's and 1 Linea were ready for delivery. In the showroom, there were more people on the Fiat side then Tata's and the salesguys were busy asking the manager for next lot of Punto deliveries from Fiat. People are going to check the Linea but then it's upto the sales staff to convert walk in's to customer's. Unfortunately, that is where the Tata sales staff are really poor. I will give you a example from my personal expereince.

A colleague of mine bought a i20 1.2. She is a staunch Hyundai buyer - they have a Santro and Accent, have bought a i20 and are planning for a Verna / i30 by the year end. On my suggestion she checked out the Punto. Everyone in her family loved the car but she bought the i20 because in her words "the Punto had very poor head room." She told me how come you didn't feel that way because you are so much taller then me. I asked her if she checked whether the driver's seat was set at it's highest position. She said that this part did not strike her! All it would have taken the sales is a 30 second effort to adjust the seat to retain a customer and they failed in that.

[RX135]

Originally Posted by marathp

Infact I was holding a check to pay advance for a Linea, but the take it or leave it attitude of concorde bangalore really put me off. It was a typical government office attitude. More over, I haven't even received a single follow up call after my TD.

During TD, a sales executive came along, who doesn't know a thing about Linea. I have made few questions about controls, lights etc. but no clear answer.

Quite interesting! Did you check with any other Tata-Fiat dealers in Bangalore?

If you are complaining about take it or leave it attitude, have you checked how, many if not all, Honda showrooms treat customers? Not any different! But then that's accepted because it's a Honda (Okay! No Fiat/Honda gang war here. I just picked one based on personal experience in Pune).

How many sales executives are really knowledgeable about cars across dealerships and manufacturers? Not many. It varies largely from dealer to dealer on same manufacturer.

I have no experience with new Fiats, but when I bought it 4.5 years back, I was exactly told same things. Heck! Even Fiat was supposed to be non-existent in India by 2006. On the contrary, I had excellent pre-sales and post sales support (though dealership closed down later for other totally unrelated reasons). The car, which was supposed to have all those quality issues and niggles, has held up far better than its competitors of same age and never had to spend time in workshop other than regular servicing (touchwood).

A Fiat car won't have any snob value (recent ones *may*) like a Honda does. But, it does bring smile on your face every time you drive it.

All said and done, no matter how their cars are, Fiat *has* to bend backwards and keep working hard if it has to turn around public opinion about a Fiat. So, they not just have to match others but surpass them. Steep task indeed!

[Sunilrj]

Originally Posted by naveenvenkatesh

In the absence of expert comments by GTO , i have made an amateurish attempt in drawing inferences from the excel sheet . Following are some of my observations (Please feel free to add/modify/correct if you feel so):

.

well! looks like GTO found some time after catching prawns and having coconuts fall around him to coach naveen venkatesh to write something..this looks a lot GTOish! naveen good job..! maybe you can act as a Substitute for GTO for Sales Analysis!

[shineshine]

Thats a nice reveiew naveen. Keep it up.

[Mevtec]

RX 135 If you are complaining about take it or leave it attitude, have you checked how, many if not all, Honda showrooms treat customers? Not any different! But then that's accepted because it's a Honda (Okay! No Fiat/Honda gang war here. I just picked one based on personal experience in Pune).

Hi friends,from my experience Honda showrooms and service centers treat customers "n" times better than TATA/FIAT,at least in Kerala. I have owned a TATA vehicle for ten years and have visited their showrooms from Calicut to Trivandrum.I have been a TATA fan.But at the end of the day the ownership experience of our 2004 NHC made us to buy ANHC.ANHC has a waiting period of more than one month in TVM.I believe there is no point in advertising if a company cannot provide good quality vehicles and customer care.

[Sunilrj]

Originally Posted by Mevtec

Hi friends,from my experience Honda showrooms and service centers treat customers "n" times better than TATA/FIAT,at least in Kerala. I have owned a TATA vehicle for ten years and have visited their showrooms from Calicut to Trivandrum.I have been a TATA fan.But at the end of the day the ownership experience of our 2004 NHC made us to buy ANHC.ANHC has a waiting period of more than one month in TVM.I believe there is no point in advertising if a company cannot provide good quality vehicles and customer care.

visit mangalore. Peninsular Honda
I visited the showroom when i was contemplating buying a new car this april.
me: i need details of the honda city
salesguy : wait
me: i have been waiting for 15 minutes
salesguy: are u sure u want to buy a honda city
me: i need to have a TD and then i will decide
salesguy: can you afford a Honda City
me: (take out my visiting card and give it to him)[ for the record am a practising chartered accountant] [{ also a member of the Voluntary organisation in Interest of Consumer education}
salesguy: sorry sir i didnt know who you are, here is the brochure and price list. if you need the car you need to give a downpayment of rs. 100,000
me: i havent even seen the car nor checked out its features
salesguy to his colleague : ( what a headache this guy is {in colloquial langauage - tulu})
me: (after going thru the brochure) any discounts / offers / freebies ?
salesguy: Honda doesnt have the habbit of giving anything of that sort.
me: what about a test drive ?
salesguy: 100's of people visit the showroom everyday. if we give a testdrive to everyone we shall have to close the showroom
me: fine then. keep your honda for yourself. i'll either keep the Sx4 or buy the linea! goodbye

15 days later
salesguy: sir what happend. you were so sure of buying the city
me: &%#* off. you can keep the city for yourself for the way you treated me. i got a Linea
salesguy: sir i was in TATA and before that with maruti. FIAT cars are bad. no service. maruti's MASS are cheats
me: what about the car you screwed up before the customer took physical delivery, by giving it to some car decorator and getting its rear end banged up and then browbeating him to take delivery
Salesguy: sir. you know about it...??? and (disconnects) no more calls ever after!

[shrinivasap]

My experince with Magnum - Honda - in Bangalore has been excellent till date. I always get prompt service reminders, my questions are always answered promptly. well, i never went to their show room for a TD - I just called them to my office and i took 4 TDs to confirm the deal...

[neotraveller]

Actually even I had good experience at Sundaram Honda. They were polite, they also offered to send TD vehicle to house provided I give them a week's time.
The TATA guys din't send TD vehicle to my home as they said its newly launched vehicle and they can't send it as people will be visiting showroom. Fair enough. I visited all TATA/Ford/Honda showrooms and did TDs myself.

But, moral of the story is ... irrespective of BRAND, there are bad dealers.
So don't let insignificant things like "I was not offered cold-drinks, they din't get TD vehicle to my house, they din't greet me properly etc" bother you and end up NOT buying what you like!

I will share an experience from US:
I went along with my american friend to an Acura showroom and they were really snobbish as hell!
My friend said, yeah these car dealers are scumbags, they always judge you by your appearance and pander to the rich-looking folks.
He still booked the car from that dealership.
see, its nothing new. Happens elsewhere in the world too.

Ok. Now we are seriously off-topic!