After a sluggish first half of 2014, the Indian car market has been witnessing steady growth in the past months and the month of July 2014 too stands testimony to the same. However, July also saw some radical changes in car sales figures with Alto losing half of its volumes compared to June and sold 16,997 units (30,499 units in June), while the Swift DZire maintained consistent growth and emerged as the most selling car with 18,634 units sold, reclaiming the top spot for July 2014 after first emerging as the best seller in May this year.
The third and fourth position was also taken up by Marutis, the Swift and Wagon R that managed 15,703 and 11,762 units respectively. July also saw a new entrant into the top 5 with the all new Honda City that has ceremoniously managed 7000+ units since the launch earlier this year and in the last month too sold 7697 units. In comparison, competitor Hyundai Verna registered 2853 units in the last month, while sales of the Vento dropped by over 50 percent to just 529 units in July. The Honda Amaze however saw sales sliding downwards with 4507 units sold, losing 36 percent of its sales compared to June this year.
Another Honda that managed to make waves was the new Mobilio MPV that sold 3365 units in its first month of sales; however, rivals Toyota Innova and Maruti Ertiga seemed unaffected and registered a sale of 5591 and 5428 units respectively. A clearer idea on the Mobilio’s performance is expected in the following months. Even with the Japanese automakers leading the sales chart, the Korean manufacturer Hyundai wasn’t far behind and continued to gain momentum with the Grand i10 that finished 6th with 7023 units and the Xcent compact sedan coming in 8th with 6652 units sold. However, Hyundai’s other products did not have an equally compelling run and failed to make a mark in the last month. With the new i20 launched though, August seems promising for the automaker.
The radical change in the sales chart has been greatly regarded to the change in the customer preference. While sub Rs. 4 lakh cars take most of the market share in terms of sales, July saw majority of the top 5 vehicles to be priced above the Rs. 4 lakh mark. With new products available at affordable prices, customers are slowly moving on to bigger cars, especially compact sedans. Maruti once again managed to keep the sales chart in its favour with most of its products finishing in the top 10 list. It will be interesting to see how the Tata Zest performs against the DZire and whether it affects the latter.
