India's biggest utility vehicle player Mahindra & Mahindra will spend close to Rs 300 crore ($60 million) towards brand-building and promotion as it prepares to launch its vehicles in the largest automotive market in the world - the United States.
JLR sees job cut if the situation does not improve.
Most top car makers are offering discounts, targeted specifically at government employees. About 5 million employees are expected to benefit from the government's move to raise its employees' salary by 70 per cent. The revised pay scales will be effective January 2006, which means they will get their pending salaries in bulk. Auto makers are hoping they will use the lumpsum payment to make a down payment for a car.
The company, which is now moving from being a premium brand to a mass market player through two launches in the small car segment in the next four years, hopes to cash in on Brand Honda's strong presence in the rural and semi-urban markets in India. Experts call it a gradual scaling up of the brand in the minds of the Indian consumers -- a strategy followed by the Japanese major in all parts of the globe.
The company already sells medium-to-high powered tractors in the US market. Although the exact date of launching the vehicles in the US was not revealed, company sources said that the launch will take place in January.
The Swift DZire, which is essentially a replacement model for the Esteem, was launched by Maruti Suzuki to strengthen its dwindling position at the entry-level of the sedan segment. The car was launched with an attractive price tag of Rs 4,49,000 in March, 2008.
The rupee's slide against the dollar and euro has put pressure on international automobile companies as compressed margins may force them to revisit prices of imported models in the next few months.
Tax concessions in Uttarakhand are encouraging auto majors from Hero Honda to Tata Motors to shift a larger part of their manufacturing to the state to counter rising raw material costs and increase their flexibility to offer consumers cheaper models in a competitive market.
Austrian two-wheeler maker KTM Power Sports is developing three intra-city transportation models - a trike, a budget car and a scooter - in a joint collaboration with Bajaj Auto. Bajaj, India's second-largest motorcycle maker, owns 21 per cent stake in KTM.
Analysts tracking listed companies like Hero Honda, Bajaj Auto and TVS Motors have said sales forecast for the two-wheeler industry for the next few months looks very bleak as spiralling input costs, high lending rates and reducing availability of finance will put brakes on sales growth. ICICI Bank's has already withdrawn from advancing loans at two-wheeler dealerships.
In an attempt to steal the two-wheeler market from the three Indian giants Hero Honda, Bajaj and TVS Motors, which collectively account for almost 85 per cent of sales, Japanese bike manufacturers like Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki will launch scaled-down Indian versions of their international superbike models.
Honda Motorcycle Scooter India, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Honda Motor Company, Japan, will launch a slew of high-power premium bikes in India, the first of which will debut by March next year, according to company executives.
The group's foray into the segment dates back to the start of 2004 when M&M Group Chairman Keshub Mahindra said the company had started testing some two-wheeler models and was looking at a commercial launch. Vice-Chairman Anand Mahindra said: "The company's foray into the bottom segment of the pyramid will create tremendous brand awareness in an entire section of the population and open a whole new population in the urban market."
With automotive sales entering into a sluggish period, leading commercial vehicle makers are enticing buyers by doling out discounts and lucrative finance options. Tata Motors, for instance, recently run a scheme wherein commercial vehicle buyers would get three months' waiver on equated monthly installments on the vehicle loan. The response, according to the company, was very positive.
A proposal by the joint venture between Tata Motors and Fiat to set up a facility to manufacture the world's most famous small diesel engine -- the 1.3 multijet -- had been rejected by Japan's largest maker of minicars, Suzuki Motor Corporation.
India's four-wheeler sector may post a flat profit growth in the first quarter due to a rise in input costs. The cost of automobile steel, which constitutes about 40 per cent of the total raw materials, rose by more than 25 per cent during the three-month period. Prices of raw materials like aluminium, copper, rubber and fuel also appreciated significantly.
Iconic Italian brand Alfa Romeo is all set to burn rubber on Indian roads next year as Fiat, the parent company, prepares to launch the brand in the local market, according to top Fiat India executives.
According to sources privy to the information, default rates have touched 5-6 per cent in the past six months as against the usual 1-2 per cent. Banks and other lending organisations agree that there has been a rise in delinquency rates, but the increase has only become significant during the past one month following the fuel hike. Fuel costs account for about 60 per cent of the total operating expenses of truckers.
The story about India enticing world auto majors will add another feather in European giant Volkswagen's (VW) cap as it prepares for its first fully-original Indian Volkswagen car, made with the help of expertise provided by Indian engineers and designers.
A slowdown in the automobile industry is set to reverse by the year-end. The slowdown, which is cyclical in nature and occurs after every seven years, should come to an end in the next three months, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the country's apex automobile body.
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