To push sales in a sluggish market as the festival season sets in, Maruti Suzuki, the country's largest car maker intends to offer discounts upto ₹90,000 on selected models like Alto, Ritz, Wagon R, Ertiga, Sting Ray and SX4.
A recent report of Auto Economic Times claims that besides the discounts offered, the customers can avail benefit of corporate discounts and exchange bonus, which would make the car cheaper. Going by the report, the latest discount offer ranges from ₹10,000 to ₹90,000. It looks like Maruti discounts on nearly all models, except the new cars in the market.
If the recent report is to be believed, Maruti's entry level car Alto will now be cheaper by ₹40,000-50, 000, while the models like Wagon R and Stingray will get a price cut of ₹65,000 and ₹60,000 respectively. The company's outgoing sedan SX4 gets the deep discounts of ₹90,000. It appears like Maruti wants to make room for the upcoming sedan Ciaz in the country, as they are eager to clear out SX4 from the market by offering heavy discount. Maruti Ertiga is another model which is also offered a discount of ₹60,000.
Maruti is expected to launch its new sedan dubbed Ciaz, the replacement of its underperforming SX4 in the domestic market in July this year. Ciaz, a car which was first seen at the Delhi Auto Expo 2014, is based on the Suzuki Authentics concept car and is likely to come with 1.3 liter Multijet diesel or 1.4 liter K Series petrol engine of Ertiga. The car will be pitted against Hyundai Verna, Honda City and Volkswagen Vento in the sub-continent and is expected to carry price tag of ₹7.2 lakh to ₹10.5 lakh.
The car maker hopes to revive their market in India with the latest price cut. The domestic auto market has been witnessing a sluggish demand from past couple of months and Maruti's sales have also been down.
In May, the sales of Maruti were up 19.2 percent after a long pause. The company's total vehicle sales for the month of May stood at 1,00,925 units as against the 84,677 units in the corresponding month last year. The domestic sales of the company zoomed to 90,560 units last month from the 77,821 units in May 2014; registering an increase of 16.4 percent. The export of the company also saw a growth of 51.2 percent to 10,365 units in May 2014, against 6,856 units in the corresponding month last year.
