After watching its market share shrink to miniscule 0.73% in January by not selling anything, Honda is taking all necessary steps to make a comeback in 2012. The company has recovered from the natural calamities that god threw at it and is eager to come out with all guns blazing.
First up, the Jazz and Brio bookings are re-opened in all major cities. The Tsunami floods in Thailand wrecked havoc on the production of both hatchbacks due to which bookings were stalled.
Honda India decided to outsource the component parts from other vendors from Japan and China. A week earlier the company had confirmed that it had started full capacity production work and is hoping to clear all the backlog by March.
click through to read on
Hit by an earthquake, then by a tsunami, the Japanese know how to bounce back. After facing severe parts shortage due to natural calamities in the past year, Honda Siel India has finally resumed normal production at their plant in Greater Noida. The plant will manufacture 370 cars a day and increase to 440 to achieve peak output by March.
In the past 6 months, Honda has taken immense beating in their sales figures due to lack of parts. The situation was severe in Jan 2012 because the company reported 0 units for Jazz and Brio. Despite no bookings taken from last December, the company still had over 7000 orders waiting to be manufactured.
The day has finally dawned upon us. Honda has been dethroned from its last dominant segment. No longer is Honda-Siel a leader in any segment of the Indian car market.
It all started with 3 major products from Honda dominating the 3 respective segments. The Honda City was the king of the C+ Sedan Segment. The Honda Civic ruled the D Segment and the Honda Accord dominated in a segment above.
But slowly and steadily the competition crept up and Honda started losing pole position in all segment. The Toyota Corolla and Chevy Cruze dethroned the Civic. The Superb overtook the Accord. And finally, in the month of March 2011, the VW Vento has managed to outsell the segment leader – the Honda City by a margin of over 1,000 units. And Honda City isn’t even the the 2nd best selling sedan in that segment because the SX4 takes that title for the month of March.
click through to read more
Pushed to the back foot after the Jazz failed to pick itself up, Honda is in a tight spot. There has been a sunroof here and a variant there but no real launches since the Jazz bowed in back in mid 2009. The new Civic is behind schedule, the Brio is also taking its time. Honda’s been hit hard in every segment and diesel’s absence is one of the reasons. [ Read More ]
India’s largest carmaker – Maruti Suzuki has yet again hiked the prices (since its last hike in October’08) of its cars by Rs 5,000-10,000 with effect from January 28, attributing it to higher input prices and foreign currency movement, which affects prices of imported components.
While prices of all variants of SX4 sedan has been hiked by Rs 9,000, the price of Swift Petrol LXi has now been revised upwards by Rs 5,000.
After watching its market share shrink to miniscule 0.73% in January by not selling anything, Honda is taking all necessary steps to make a comeback in 2012. The company has recovered from the natural calamities that god threw at it and is eager to come out with all guns blazing.
