Expensive cars have carried off the bestseller tag from Maruti Alto. The model has been pushed to the third spot, with sales of 17,311 units last month. The pole position has been taken by none other than but the DZire, which comes at double the price.
All top spots taken by Maruti Suzuki, its Swift hatchback has taken the second spot, but, unfortunately Alto has been pushed to the third slot for the first time in its over-two decade existence in India. Whereas the subcompact sedan DZire sold 18,953 units last month, Maruti Suzuki sold 17,936 units of Swift hatchback.
Alto, the low-priced car from Maruti stable, has been the hottest selling car for the past two decades. But it look as if lost stream over the years as customer preference shifted to fully loaded premium small cars.
DZire, a sedan, is much richer on features and also carries a choice of an automatic variant that is not available in Alto.
Alto, a hatchback powered by an 800cc engine, start at the ex-showroom price of Rs 2.76 lakh past in Delhi, whereas the DZire starts at 5-7.3 lakh, depending on the model.
Maruti spokesperson refused to remark on the brand; however a senior executive said that irrespective of the badge, all the top four bestselling cars sold in India are from Maruti Suzuki stable. “It’s the right strategy and DZire is proving that. Customers are upgrading to bigger cars and this is the reason that DZire and Swift have emerged as such strong products, “the executive added.
The conquest of DZire has led to the emergence of several brands in the market and made the compact sedan fastest growing car segment in the country, with sales growing 4% in the last fiscal to 2.33 lakh units even as the car market as a whole dropped 5%.
Hyundai’s newly launched Xcent compact sedan outsold EON by a huge margin in May is another example for expensive cars outselling cheap models of the same brand.