Indian car sales for October 2015: Winners and Losers

With total sales of over 2,64,000 units, October has been the best month for the Indian car market ever. Coupled with the fact that few of its biggest stakeholders have already registered all-time high sales, last month and festivities continue till the middle of November, things look all the more promising. Here is CarWale’s list of the top carmakers who took full advantage of the opportunities this festive season and also of the ones who missed the bus.

Winners

Maruti Suzuki is like the barometer of the Indian car market and their 24 per cent growth directly reflects on the overall market performance. All the recently launched models barring the S-Cross have done perfectly well. The sales of the new Ciaz with SHVS hybrid have reached close to 6,000 units, the Ertiga facelift is also clocking similar numbers. Launched on October 26, the Baleno had over 4,000 dealer dispatches last month.  The crossover isn’t performing as expected with just 3,000 units sold last month and there are huge discounts on the car already. The other noteworthy model is the Dzire – Maruti has sold over 24,000 examples last month and that is phenomenal for the company in terms of revenue. Only the Alto has clocked such numbers before and the Dzire costs at least twice as much. 

Following close behind in second position is Hyundai with similar 24 per cent growth and domestic sales of over 47,015 units. Such is the demand for the Korean cars that the company is actually thinking of cutting down exports to meet local demand. The Creta deserves credit for the same as the company is consistently selling over 7,000 units of the compact SUV each month. The newly launched CNG variants of the Grand i10 and Xcent should further help the brand this month.

Honda deserves to be mentioned among the winners as well. Despite stiff competition, both the City and Amaze sold over 7,000 examples each. Also, the Jazz, which is the priciest, among the premium hatchbacks sold 4,496 units. The company has clocked 52 per cent growth, but it might just become a little tough to continue at the same rate with the competition from the Baleno.

Losers

Nissan sales have plummeted in the last few months and the only saving grace was the Terrano. But the compact SUV sales have been affected by the Hyundai Creta. The numbers that till a few months back used to be around 1,100 a month have come to 900 and that is in spite of Diwali offers worth Rs 95,000 on the car.

Renault should have ideally been a part of the winners list, but is here simply for bad planning. The Kwid hadn’t even reached showrooms at the time of launch and the deliveries began almost a fortnight after the launch. The company issued a press release announcing 50,000 bookings in a month but has delivered just 5,000 cars in October. The waiting period is already close to 10 months and even the early bookings made with the intention of getting the car for Diwali will get deliveries only next year.

We were in double minds whether to add Ford to the winners list or in here. Just looking at the numbers, a 50 per cent hike compared to sales of last year looks great, but putting it in perspective with the market tells us a different story. Where every other compact sedan has performed better compared to September, the Figo Aspire sales actually went down by 15 per cent and are much lower than the Hyundai Xcent and Honda Amaze. It may be too early to comment on the hatchback, but even the EcoSport facelift with the bigger engine is actually selling less than before. We hope Ford finds a better way of marketing its products, especially the Figo twins, which we think are brilliant.