Lancer Invex-has it come too late?

The launch of the new Lancer Invex (intelligent and innovative electronic control system) model could well be a case of 'too late' but it's a gamble that Hindustan Motors (HM) is being forced to take to revive the car.

'Too late' because the Lancer, with its 1498 cc engine that develops 87 bhp, emerges quite a bit under-powered against competitors like the Chevrolet Optra, Toyota Corolla and Skoda Octavia. On top of this, priced, as it is in the Rs 7-lakh to Rs 9-lakh category, not surprisingly it has lost out in the race.

HM recently scaled down the sales forecast of the Lancer and expects to sell 3, 000 units by 31 March, 2004 - including1,500 of the Invex -a decline of 33 per cent from the 4,500 Lancers sold last year. Lancer's sales had slowed throughout last year and in October the price of Lancer GL was slashed by Rs 70,000 to boost sales. The cut price variant was offered with manual roll-down windows at Rs 6.5 lakh.

It may be recalled, the Lancer GL had been launched at Rs 7.2 lakh, positioned as HM's price warrior. Poor response forced the company to trim the tag. The company had explained the price cut saying that the Lancer GL's price was lowered because of the large-scale localisation of the model.

The lancer is the second model from the Lancer stable to have undergone price rationalisation. A few months ago the company had cut the price of its higher-end Lancer GLX by Rs 40,000 to push sales.

G Shyam Sunder, vice-president, HM, admitted that competition had hurt the Lancer, but hoped that the newly-launched Invex would improve Lancer's prospects the following year.