The country’s largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki has scrapped its plans on developing a Nano competitor for the Indian market. The company is supposed to showcase its parent company’s ‘K’ cars, the 660cc Palette and the MR Wagon at the Auto Expo 2012 to be held in Delhi in the month of January. However, the chairman of the company, Mr. R.C Bhargava stated that the company has no plans to launch these cars in India anytime soon due to their high prices. He added that in India, the customers usually associate the engine capacity of a car with its price tag, higher the price, higher is the engine capacity. However, these ‘K’ cars, though featuring just 660cc engines have higher levels of technology like all aluminium engines and sophistication making them a costly proposition in the Indian market.
Mr. Shinzo Nakanishi, Managing Director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki said that the ‘K’ cars selling in Japan attrach tax incentives from the government and are sold at about 1 million yen (Rs. 6 lakhs). The Palette and the MR Wagon will be showcased at the Auto Expo just to fill up the space. Also, the company is planning to gauge some customer feedback about the price they would like to pay for such cars. The ‘K’ cars return an amazing mileage figure of 30.2 kmpl which is one of the highest for a petrol car in the global market. The Nano on the other hand returns a mileage of 25 kmpl. However, the company has clearly stated earlier that Alto will continue to be its entry level offering for the Indian market. Other OEMs like Hyundai and General Motors have also backed out of developing a Nano competitor owing to the lacklustre performance of the Nano in the market.
Source – MyDigitalFC
