Car Sales decline Marginally in May, Heatwave And Elections were Main Reasons

The fast pace of the automobile market for the last several months has seen a halt in the last month. There has been a slight decline in passenger vehicle segment sales in May on a year-on-year basis. However, total vehicle sales have registered an increase of 2.61 percent last month due to the good performance of two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments.

Manish Raj Singhania, President, Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA), said, “Lack of new models, lack of marketing efforts by OEMs and stiff competition have impacted sales. Apart from this, customers are postponing purchases.” And low inquiries have also increased the challenges in the market.” FADA said that the scorching heat in most parts of North India has also affected the footfall in car showrooms. The automobile market is expected to pick up after the Lok Sabha elections are over.

Demand in rural areas may improve with the forecast of a better than normal monsoon. Sales of Maruti Suzuki, one of the big car makers, have declined by two percent last month. The company hopes that due to the good upcoming monsoon season, the pace of its sales will increase. Maruti Suzuki has pending orders for more than 2.25 lakh units.

Recently, the company’s Senior Executive Officer (Marketing and Sales), Partho Banerjee, said that more than 40,000 of these pending orders are for the recently launched new Swift. Apart from this, about 75,000 orders are for CNG variants. CNG cars contribute more than 32 percent to the company’s sales. It is getting a lot of demand for CNG variants of Brezza and Ertiga. The waiting period for these is four to six weeks. The number of arena sales outlets of the company has reached 3,000. It has Arena outlets in more than 2,500 cities and towns. The company opened the first Arena outlet in 2017. It sells WagonR, Swift, Brezza, Dzire, Ertiga, Eeco, Alto K10, Celerio and S-Presso through the Arena network. The company had launched a new version of hatchback Swift. Its starting price is Rs 6.49 lakh (ex-showroom). It is available in nine exterior color options, three dual-tone and two new luscious blue and novel orange colours.