Its a near traffic jam situation in the luxury car segment. The car market in Rs 10 lakh or plus price bracket is bursting with models but the growth seems to be stagnating with an average of 7-8 per cent per annum.Though Honda’s Accord and Hyundai’s Sonata have performed well in the month of January, sale of other cars in the E segment have not gone up.Honda Accord has topped the sales chart of E segment cars with the sale of 156 units compared to December 2002 sale of only 73 units. Hyundai’s Sonata with entry level price positioning of Rs 11.9 lakh and a top end V6 variant at Rs 15.9 lakh (The only V6 in the Sub 20 lakh segment) has successfully straddled both ends of the segment and held on to its leadership with a close to 50 per cent market share even while the volumes of the segment tapered. Hyundai sold 140 Sonata cars in January while in December’02, only 58 Sonata cars were sold. Figure of General Motors India’s is also encouraging with the sale of 101 units of Vectra in January.However, DaimlerChrysler managed to sell only four units of it E class luxury car Mercedes Benz which was remarkably lower from 66 units sold in December’02 and 71 units in November’02. Ford Mondeo also has been marginalised as a very small player by selling only 17 cars in January’03. In November and December’02, Ford had sold only 17 and 14 units of Mondeo respectively.The premium saloon Camry from Japanese auto giant Toyota Kirloskar has also slipped after the initial fast pick-up. The car was launched in October 2002 and managed to sell 111 units which declined to 103 units in November’02 followed by sale of only 53 units in December. In January also, Toyota has sold around 55 units of Camry. The overall market for such cars is expected to go marginally up this year to 6500-6800 units compared to 6000 units in 2002. According to industry analysts “most of the models in this segment like Hyundai Sonata, Honda Accord and Ford Mondeo were launched mid 2001 followed by Toyota Camry in October 2002. There was a latent demand for cars in these segment therefore initial response was very good but now the market has shrunk.” Most of the companies are just doing sustainable sales now after the spurt in volumes following their launch, a Hyundai official said. However, with the launch of Corolla within the price bracket of Rs 9.8 lakh to Rs 12 lakh, Toyota is more upbeat about the market growth. A Toyota Kirloskar official said “Indian market is expanding and growing with competition heating up. All the manufacturers will be producing based on demand and we expect that this market will grow around 7-8 per cent annually.”
