[Toyota's Innova Crysta]
By Ha Man-joo, India correspondent, AsiaToday - It has been proved again that new models and compact cars are still popular in the Indian vehicle market. According to Indian car industry and media outlets on Monday, Toyota saw its June sales go up 29% on the strength of its newly launched Innova Crysta. Renault India registered a whopping growth of 173% thanks to explosive orders for its mini-SUV Kwid.
On the other hand, the country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki saw its domestic sales decline of 10.2%. This was Maruti's worst sales performance in several years. Hyundai Motor India registered a growth of 9.7% over the same month last year, however it failed to exceed monthly sales of 40,000 units, which was the highest record achieved back in August last year.
[Kwid, the largest volume driver of Renault India. The photo is taken in Delhi Auto Show held at India Expo Mart, Greater Noida, Delhi NCR, India, on February 2016./ Photographed by Ha Man-joo]
Maruti Suzuki sold 92,133 units in the domestic market in June. Besides, exports slumped 45% year on year at 6,707 units (June 2015: 12,130). For the March-June quarter, the company sold a total of 322,340 units, up 5.4%. The company's sales volume contraction is reportedly due to a fire at the factory of its supplier Subros.
[Hyundai Motor India's Santro, whose production was stopped back in January after 16 years.]
Hyundai Motor volumes grew by 9.7% with sales of 39.806 units. Besides its exports grew by 0.9% with sales of 15,762 units. The company plans to bring back Santro because of current demand for small cars in the Indian market after it was phased out.
Thanks to a positive impact of the recently launched Innova Crysta, Toyota, which has been one of the big sufferes due to the diesel ban in Delhi-NCR, sold 13,502 units in the domestic market, 29% growth over the corresponding period last year (June 2015: 10,464). Toyota increased the monthly production from 6,000 to 7,800 to satisfy 30,000 orders for Innova Crysta.
Renault and Ford grew by 173% and 109%, respectively, thanks to a surge in sales of compact cars.