The overall car sales in the month of June have dipped as compared to the previous month, May 2018. Now, this is a pattern that repeats itself every year during the monsoon sets because buyers prefer to postpone their purchases to the post-monsoon festive season. Besides after an unexpected windfall in sales in April and May, the market had to be normalised in accordance with the law of averages.
But, compared to the sales figures of the previous years, sales in June are still quite high and if this trend continues, we can expect to hit the 3.5-million per year sales mark in this financial year. If you compare the year-on-year sales for the last year, the growth will be huge. But then, it needs to be discounted for the pre-GST low-volumes to avoid double taxation.
The two largest losers this month have been Maruti Suzuki and Mahindra with their month-on-month sales dipping by 17 per cent and the 15 per cent respectively. On the other hand, Tata and Honda have by grown 4 per cent and 11 per cent respectively. The Tiago is the new Indica for Tata, carrying the entire company on its shoulders. The Nexon, on the other hand, is also shaping up well, sharing some of the growth burden. For Honda, the biggest winner has been the Amaze which has lapped up two consecutive months of 9,000 units. We will have to wait for the initial furore to die down and see where the Dzire challenger settles down at.
Last month, we saw the MY2018 Range Rover and Range Rover Sport come in along with the T8 Inscription trim of the Volvo XC90. Mahindra introduced the TUV300 Plus while Mitsubishi got us the new Outlander. It has been an all-SUV fest except for the Mercedes S63 AMG Coupe.
In the next few months, we are expecting Maruti Suzuki to bring out the new Ciaz, Hyundai to show us the new Santro and Mahindra to pull the veil off the S201 compact SUV and the U321 MPV.
Finally, the luxury segment numbers are in with Mercedes, BMW and Volvo sending us their half-yearly exploits. While we await numbers from Audi and Jaguar and Land Rover, it is evident that Mercedes-Benz is ruling the luxury market with just over 8,000 units in the first half of 2018. BMW is not too far behind with 5,171 units sold, including the Minis. Volvo, the Swedish car maker, has been one of the fastest growing luxury car brands in the country. After a few docile years in India, Volvo has set forth the hostilities with its new range of cars that are probably the best looking in each of their segments. With 1,242 units sold in H1, the Swedish car maker certainly seems to be aiming for the top-three slots.
