Top Gainers and Losers; December 2012 Car Sales Analysis- CarDekho Exclusive

December too could not bring any relief to the Indian automotive Industry, it has been amongst one of the worst months for the Industry, in fact worst ever 2012 month for many automakers. And the ones who have recorded a growth too is very marginal, which further confirms that the Industry is truly going through worst of its times. And the reasons behind such a low performance is not hidden, rising fuel prices, rupee depreciation and economic slowdown have not spared any automaker.

Every automaker offered best of the deals and discounts to lure buyers, but high interest rates and inflation didn't back customers. While Maruti Suzuki India, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ford India, Honda Motor Co registered a rise in December 2012, Hyundai, Tata Motors, Toyota and General Motors could not manage to do that. In fact, the second largest automaker of India Hyundai Motors which did superb in October recording a phenomenon 21% rise, could not sustain that in November and December 2012. However good campaigning of their low cost car Eon helped it come in top five selling cars of the month. The other two top-selling vehicles of Hyundai, i10 and the i20 too inspected a drop of over 10 per cent. But one more good thing that happened to Hyundai was the rising sales numbers of its newly launched D segment sedan, Elantra Fluidic, which now leads the segment.

The American auto major General Motors despite offering various schemes could not get the expected numbers. Its sales dipped 22% in December. The newly launched Chevrolet Sail U-VA too could not bring many customers to it, the only car that they are selling in numbers is Chevrolet Beat. So we believe that a good marketing strategy will only help the company in improving their numbers in India.

Toyota Kirloskar Motor, however is the fifth best seller in the country, recorded a huge 24% dip in December 2012. As against last year's 15,948 units in December, it could just manage to sell 12,071 units in Dec 2012. But their top seller Toyota Innova which was constantly out of top 10 selling cars, made a strong come back with 6458 units, recording a whooping 28.6% hike in its numbers as compared to the sales figures of December 2011. In fact, Maruti Suzuki Ertiga, which was selling more than the Innova for last few months and was called a serious threat to Innova, sold 5208 units in the same period, which further clears one thing that Innova and Ertiga are cars of two different leagues, no matter they come in the same segment by default. But one thing on which Toyota will have to work on is to brand itself better, as they aren't planning any new cars before 2014, else they might lose the ground.

If you look at Tata Motors' sales chart, they are constantly falling, they have recently lost their position to Mahindra & Mahindra, and if the performance remains the same, they have other close rivals like Toyota who are not very behind. But they are coming up with six new cars in 2013, which includes more luxurious version of Safari Storme, Safari Storme Automatic, Tata Aria AT, Tata Nano Diesel, Tata Nano CNG, Tata Nano 800 and some facelifts of their existing cars, and if they brand them well, it won't be that tough a job to gain the lost position.

What has helped Mahindra & Mahindra to gain a superb 18% hike in the year 2012 is people's growing interest towards Utility vehicles in India. SUV is the fastest growing segment in India and being the largest producer of SUVs, they are definitely amongst the top gainers. Their recently launched Quanto in the compact SUV segment became an instant hit and XUV500 is already doing wonders for them, however Scorpio has been not so impressive in last few months, so as in December. But M&M's not so impressive performance in Sedan segment should certainly be a worry for them.

Mahindra & Mahindra's only sedan Verito which has received the mid-life facelift, could not help the vehicle to improve its sales numbers, but the ready-to-launch Verito CS will be an interesting watch, as the Indian market today is demanding more and more compact cars.

India's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India too however managed to report a marginal hike of 3.24 per cent in its total sales (including Exports), they have their own worries. Except the Alto 800 in the mini segment, no other vehicle did good, in fact the tall boy WagonR which has always been in the top-five selling vehicles of the country could not even manage to be in the list of top-10. Other cars too are no different, but one thing that must certainly please the automaker is the outstanding performance of its top-sellers Alto (26,234), Swift (17,436) and Dzire (13,076) yet again. At a time when the entire industry is inspecting a drop, we should certainly praise for the commendable performance of MSI in December as well.