#India

Did you know that the Duster is the highest selling Renault car in the first five months of 2013? The Duster has changed the fortunes of Renault India, selling 5000 units on an average every month, accounting for 80% of Renault’s sales in India. The Renault Duster and Ford EcoSport are big competitors all over the world. In Brazil, the EcoSport has been outselling the Duster. Both cars are compact SUVs with a front-wheel drive layout and monocoque chassis (the Duster is also offered with 4-wheel drive in select markets but not in India). The competition between both vehicles is extremely intense. Both cars are manufactured in India with heavy localisation (the Duster is already being exported to Europe, while the EcoSport will soon be exported to Australia, South Africa and Europe).

Renault and Nissan have a global alliance and in India both companies keep re-badging each other’s vehicles. While Renault has re-badged the Micra as the Pulse and Sunny as the Scala, Nissan will do it’s first re-badge exercise on a Renault product with the Terrano. The Nissan Terrano, as you can see in the above sketch, is a re-badged Renault Duster.

Russia is one of the BRIC countries, the folks that are supposed to power the world to new prosperity. Too bad Russia is running out of steam. Russian car sales dropped 12 percent in May, the Association of European Businesses (AEB) told Reuters.

When Renault entered the Indian market a few years back, it had little experience. Thus the French automaker tied up with local automobile giant Mahindra. The first product to be launched was the Logan, priced a bit optimistically. The product didn’t sell, and Renault decided to part ways, giving Mahindra the rights to sell the Logan as its own product. Mahindra went solo with the Logan, re-badged it as the Verito and made some changes. The Logan started to sell better under the Mahindra umbrella.

The revived Datsun may be aimed strictly at developing world customers, but that hasn’t stopped them from releasing a very web-savvy teaser as part of some obnoxious slow reveal campaign.

Long feted as “the next China,” the Indian car market turned into a big disappointment: India’s annual car sales fell for the first time in a decade in the financial year just ended, Reuters says.

“Carmakers in India, two years ago the world’s hottest growth market after China, have seen high interest rates, rising fuel prices and prolonged economic gloom turn an industry recently growing at 30 percent a year into one plagued by huge discounts, showrooms full of unsold cars, and chronic overcapacity.”

A farmer from a village in Punjab recently paid Rs. 7,00,000/- ($13,000) to get the registration number PB-07 AK-47. AK-47 is the famous assault rifle, but what is shocking is the vehicle he got this number for.

Ad Age is reporting that Ford’s advertising agency, JWT, has fired the ad agency staffers behind a pair of offensive ads showing bound and gagged women in the back of a Ford Figo hatchback. Ford is not, however, looking to change advertising companies over the fiasco. The images were created by JWT staffers in India and then uploaded to the ad agency’s website. Such ads are often created without client approval as a way for ad designers to bolster their portfolios and were never intended to become part of Ford’s official campaign to promote the Figo.

General Motors entered India in 1996 and to this date, the company hasn’t been able to understand the market. The American car maker was among the first few to enter India after the economy was opened to foreigners in 1991, with majority of manufactuers entering India after 1998. GM has two plants in the country, both of which are under utilized (only 38% utilisation). The company initially entered with Opel branded cars (Corsa and Vectra), which were a nightmare when it came to repairs, since parts were imported from Germany, thereby costing a fortune.

While Volkswagen is soaring high in most countries, its India innings have been far from successful. Everybody keeps talking about China and India being the next big automobile markets in the world. The truth is, China has already peaked, while India has a long way to go. For instance, Volkswagen sold 2.8 million units in China last year, while in India, they sold less than 100,000 (which is their plant capacity).

Although Jaguar Land Rover has made tentative forays into building cars in India (such as building the Jaguar XF from CKD kits), the British luxury group, now owned by Tata, is apparently on the cusp of establishing full production in India.

The whole world is betting big on India and China. I don’t have much idea about China, but India definitely needs to move its game if it wants to become a biggie in the automobile sector. Scams, scams and some more scams is what India is becoming more famous for, resulting in a huge deficit for the government. This in turn results in hue and cry by the ministers, resulting in increased taxation.

The Honda CR-V might be a major success in Europe and America, but in India, it performs very poorly, selling in double digit numbers every month. Since the time of launch, Honda has sold 13,739 units of the CR-V in India. Honda launched the CR-V here ten years ago in 2003, and it still isn’t in the groove. India is d-d-d-diesel dominated, and SUVs and crossovers better be diesel or they are d-d-d-destined for d-d-doom. BMW recently launched its facelifted X1 in India, offering it with a diesel engine only. Yes, heresy, d-d-dat’s right.

The revived Datsun brand will get its first plant in India. Renault-Nissan announced plans for a new factory in India, and will invest 250 million euros to build the plant.

The Bugatti Veyron is one of the fastest cars in the world and definitely the rarest car in India. The very few (single digit) Veyrons that have been sold in India make it a sighting as probable as Elvis. Now an Indian car designer (SF Carz) has taken a Maruti Suzuki Esteem (second generation Swift) and turned it into a Veyron. The result hasn’t turned out too bad. Although the smaller dimensions of the Esteem are immediately visible, the effort is certainly a good one.