India’s best-selling compact sedan Maruti Dzire retained the top spot in sales for the third consecutive month last month even as Maruti Suzuki dominated the list of top 10 car rankings.
The Dzire clocked a 26 percent volume growth at 20,941 units last month compared to 16,613 units sold in the same month last year. The Alto came in as the second best-selling model at 19,760, but with a paltry growth of just 1 percent.
Maruti’s one-time best-seller Swift, which assumed a new avatar last month, climbed to the third spot with sales of 17,291 units. The current Swift is only the third generation model since its debut in 2005 and has already garnered close to 100,000 bookings in less than 2 months.
Baleno, Maruti Suzuki’s premium hatchback sold through the Nexa outlet, saw doubling of volumes to 15,807 units during February. The model is one of the few in the market to enjoy a waiting period which currently stretches to a maximum of one month despite being on sale for nearly three years.
Three of Hyundai models – Creta, Elite i20 and Grand i10 – found their place in the top ten ranking last month. With the exception of the Elite i20, which recorded a growth of 28 percent the other two models fared poorly with Creta volumes growing by just 3 percent and that of Grand i10 falling by 21 percent.
Sports utility vehicle specialist Mahindra & Mahindra broke into the top ten after a hiatus of more than a year. Volumes of Bolero, M&M’s best-selling model, surged 24 percent to clinch the tenth spot in the list. M&M had cut down Bolero’s size to less than 4 meters to and plonked a 1.5 litre, 3-cylinder turbo diesel engine before offering it as a variant to the regular Bolero, at a much cheaper price tag.
After a spectacular run in earlier months volumes of Tata Motors’s largest selling passenger vehicle Tiago cooled off a bit last month with volumes of 6,718 units putting the hatchback in the 12th position. In January the compact car became the first Tata car in six years to break in to the top ten list. Both Nexon and Tiago, which make up 61 percent of Tata’s monthly volumes, pushed total sale in February by 45 percent.
The intense battle for supremacy in the mid-size sedan segment continued in February with Maruti regaining the top spot with the Ciaz followed by the Hyundai Verna. Honda’s long-time flagship, and one-time segment leader, City settled at the third spot.
While Maruti Suzuki continued to dominate the utility vehicles segment with the compact SUV Vitara Brezza the Tata Tigor sprung a surprise in the compact sedan space climbing to the second spot last month thereby outselling the Hyundai Xcent.
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