If you are one of those customers who is planning to buy a car but is willing to postpone it to the next month to get a new vehicle in a new year, then think again! Due to the heavy rise in demand of diesel cars and apocalyptic fall in sales of petrol vehicles and coupled with the months of November and December remaining sluggish in terms of sales, Indian auto OEMs are facing huge inventory levels at their stockyards. This has prompted them to offer aggressive discounts in their models to push sales. Thus, the month of December is turning out to be just the month to get the best bargain in the industry. However, there are no discounts being offered in their respective diesel models to take advantage of the demand for such cars.
“The discounts are quite high – our tacticals and other benefits are 22% higher than in November this year. But the discounts are only on petrol models. Our diesel vehicles are still on wait-list – the Swift diesel in fact has a 9 month waiting list. Last year, diesel’s share in the overall passenger vehicle industry was around 34% which has now climbed to 50%,” Mayank Pareek , managing executive officer (marketing and sales), Maruti Suzuki, said.
Maruti for example is offering discounts or benefits in the range of Rs. 25,000/- on its second highest selling car, the Wagon R while Chevrolet is offering discounts upto Rs. 64,000 on its Spark model that includes Rs. 53,000/- of discount and Rs. 11,000/- worth free insurance. The Aveo U-VA is being offered for a discount of Rs. 54,000/- while it is Rs. 62,000/- on the Aveo and Rs. 56,000/- on the Optra. You can own the Beat petrol for an attractive discount worth upto Rs. 21,000 plus free insurance worth Rs. 12,000/-. However, the company is not offering any sort of discounts on its diesel models like the Beat, Cruze, Tavera and the Captiva. Other OEMs like Volkswagen have continued to keep their festival offers like free insurance worth Rs. 40,000. Volkswagen is also holding the price line of its Polo and Vento Breeze versions, launched in September as part of VW’s action model strategy. These aggressive steps by the auto companies will definitely help clear some stocks from their inventories but they are not expecting any enormous sales volumes and is likely to continue like the month of November.
