Car, two-wheeler sales take a hit in November

02 December 2008

New Delhi: Car and two-wheeler sales were hit hard in the month of November and fell on an average by 20-40 per cent for most vehicle makers.

Maruti Suzuki India the biggest car company by sales in India saw domestic sales fall by almost 27 per cent to 47,704 units, as against 65,216 unit sales in November last year.

While sales of Maruti's mid segment cars-Alto, Wagon-R, Zen and Swift -fell by 26.6 per cent, the entry level Maruti 800 saw sales crash by 59 per cent. Sales of the Omni and Versa were down 47.6 per cent.

The only models that enabled the company breathe a sigh of relief are D'zire and SX4, sales of which are up 40 per cent.

Maruti Suzuki's exports however rose nearly 12 per cent at 4,483 units. Despite this, the combined local and export sales were down 24.4 per cent at 52,711 units, compared to 69,699 units last November.

Another company that saw sales plummet was Tata Motors. While the company's car and utility vehicle sales in the Indian market fell 12 per cent at 14,327 units, as against 16,322 vehicles sold last year, its bus and truck sales almost crashed and were down 40 per cent in the local market at 16,229 numbers, compared to 26,895 vehicles sold in the same month last year.

Of this, sales of medium and heavy vehicles fell the maximum at 60 per cent while those of light buses and trucks clocked a minor 16 per cent fall mainly due to the high selling Tata Ace. Among Tata Motor's passenger cars, sales of the Indica range dropped by nearly 14 per cent at 9,039 units. However the Indigo range was a life saver and showed an impressive 73 per cent growth at 3,477 units mainly on the back of the Indigo CS.