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10 February, 2012 The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India on Thursday said it has crossed the one crore units milestone of cumulative sales in the domestic market since it started selling cars 29 years back.
“The 10 millionth vehicle, a Red Swift Vxi, was dispatched to Coimbatore on Thursday morning from the company’s Manesar plant,” the company said in a statement.
Maruti Suzuki India had rolled out its first car -- an M800 -- in December 1983 and attained five million domestic sales in February 2006.
“The next five million domestic sales have been achieved in six years,” the company said.
Commenting on crossing the milestone, MSI Managing Director and CEO Shinzo Nakanishi said: “Maruti Suzuki’s success story is closely linked with the success story of India in the last two decades. Even as India has grown and transformed, Maruti Suzuki has evolved to meet changing demands.”
The company that started off as a joint venture between the government of India and Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp, had transformed personal transportation in India with its M800 model, which till date continues to find many buyers across the country.
While Maruti 800 and Omni powered sales for almost two decades, the Alto has been India’s best-selling car for the last over seven years, the company said.
In recent years, the success of WagonR and Swift, among others, has accelerated the company’s progress towards the one crore mark, it added.
“We will continue to drive the growth and evolution of India’s car market,” Nakanishi said.

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23 November, 2011 Force Motors Ltd, the Pune-based maker of a range of commercial vehicles, plans to invest Rs 1,000 crore over the next two years for the development of new models.
Force Motors Managing Director Prasan Firodia told reporters in Hyderabad on Tuesday while inaugurating a showroom for its new sports utility vehicle (SUV) ‘Force One’.
The company, which has a manufacturing capacity of one lakh vehicles in Madhya Pradesh, expected an overall turnover of Rs 3,000 crore in this financial year, he said.
Talking about Force One, Firodia said that the turbo-charged heart of the SUV, the 2.2 FM tech Engine, beats faster than any other SUV in its segment.

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29 September, 2011 French carmaker Renault has lined up a marketing spend of Rs 6.5 crore during the F1 Grand Prix, scheduled to be held in Greater Noida near Delhi from October 28.
“We have a lot of events around the F1 GP. Apart from the engines on the cars, we will display an F1 car, hold events at malls using race simulators so that winners get invites to the GP,” said Len Curran, vice-president, sales and marketing, Renault India. He added that the company had prepared campaigns with Yahoo and animation at its showrooms, where tickets can be won. The company’s chairman, Carlos Ghosn, will unveil during the event the concept version of its hatchback that it plans to launch in the country in the first quarter of 2012.
Curran was in Pune for the unveiling of the Koleos sports utility vehicle. Customers could soon face a waiting list for the Koleos, he said, should the orders continue at the same rate in October as in the first month of the vehicle's launch.
Renault, which has announced a five-car roll out by December 2012, will bring in the mini SUV, the Duster, by the first half of next year. “This will be a heavily Indianised car, not like the Dacia Duster that you see in Europe,” Curran said.
The firm has sold 700 units of the luxury sedan Fluence since its launch in May, with the diesel variant accounting for 80 percent of sales. Meanwhile, Renault has begun sales in Europe of its Twizzy, a coupe which has largely been designed at its Mumbai engineering design centre.

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18 January, 2011 Audi India has re-launched the R8 with upgraded V-10 engine. Audi India Director Michael Perschke said the launch of this car would boost the company’s image in the Indian market as the earlier version of the car has been voted the “Supercar of the Year in 2008”.
He also mentioned that the company hoped to sell 4,500 units this year as compared to 3,003 units in 2010. Audi India also wants to enhance its dealership network from the present 14 to 20 by this year end. “This year, we will have a presence in Surat, Ludhiana, Nagpur and Indore. We want to take advantage of the strong brand image we have,” he said.
The Audi R8 has been launched as a CBU. Audi currently assembles A4, Q6 and Q5 models at its Aurangabad plant in Gujarat. The plant, with a single shift, has a capacity to produce 4,500-5,000 units.
Audi also plans to launch three newer versions of the A8, A7 and A6 series this year in the country with the aim of increasing its domestic market share.
“We will launch the A8 with a larger wheelbase by the end of January or beginning February. Then we will launch A7 in May-June and later in the fourth quarter of 2011 we will launch the A6,” Mr. Perschke said.
Stating that Audi has been witnessing stiff competition in India with entry of many luxury carmakers, he said the launches would help the company achieve a 23-25 per cent market share.
“In China and Japan, we are the number one (car maker). In India and in the USA, we are growing very fast. In India ... you (carmaker) need to be patient. We intend to reach 23-24 per cent market share this year of the targeted 30 per cent,” he said.

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28 December, 2010 Hyundai Motor India is planning to set up a Greenfield plant. The South Korean company will spend Rs 400 crore to build the 1.5 lakh diesel engine plant, hoping to cater to the rising requirements from domestic market. The company is yet to decide on the location of the plant. Hyundai’s two car manufacturing plants are located in Chennai.
“While we are channelizing more production to India and cutting down exports, the new diesel engines would be fitted into our existing and future cars as local customers are gradually preferring diesel over petrol ,” said HW Park, MD, Hyundai Motor India.
Hyundai sells diesel models of its i20 hatchback and other bigger cars and imports the engines from South Korea. It is also looking for a third car plant in India to meet the growing demand and is awaiting final nod from the parent company.
Hyundai has already increased the allocation to the domestic market to 65% for calendar year 2011, up from the 3.56 lakh cars it sold in India, aggregating 60% of its total year production. And the company also plans to bring a car smaller than the Santro.
“We have witnessed 24% growth in the Indian market even as exports at 2.47 lakh cars were down by 8.5% in 2010 calendar year,” Hyundai’s director (marketing & sales) Arvind Saxena said.
“The small car will be the smallest model from Hyundai's global line-up and India would be one of its lead markets,” Mr Park said.

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