Honda Cars India (HCIL) has achieved a major milestone with its compact sedan – Honda Amaze. The car, developed jointly with Honda Automobile Thailand (HATC), has surpassed the 400,00-unit cumulative sales landmark across two generations.

Launched in April 2013, the Honda Amaze was the first sub-four-metre compact sedan from the Japanese carmaker, which so far had been relying on its fully-equipped sedans in the C-segment in the form of the highly successful Honda City, lower D-segment with the Civic and the upper D-segment with the flagship Honda Accord.

Honda’s foray into diesel
According to the company, the brand Amaze was conceptualised keeping in mind the ever-evolving needs and aspirations of Indian customers. The Amaze also marked the carmaker’s entry into the diesel segment in India when it debuted with the company’s 1.5-litre, four-cylinder Earth Dreams diesel engine.While it was initially offered with the option of a five-speed manual transmission in both petrol and diesel powertrains and five-speed torque convertor automatic, paired only to its 1.2-litre petrol engine option, the second-generation Amaze launched in March 2018, saw the conventional automatic get replaced with a CVT as well as introduction of a segment-first option of a diesel-CVT combination, also a world-first for Honda itself.

Where the first-generation Amaze clocked a cumulative 2.6 lakh units in the Indian market, the second-generation model, code-named 2UA, has so far garnered sales of 1.4 lakh units as per the company, thus, taking the total tally to over 400,000 units in the domestic market in a little over seven years’ timeframe.

According to Rajesh Goel, senior vice-president and director, Marketing and Sales,Honda Cars India, “Honda Amaze has been an extremely successful model for HCIL and is akey pillar of our business. The 4-lakh cumulative milestone for Amaze has been possible because ofthe love of our customers and support of our dealer partners which has helped the Amaze to become apopular brand across markets.”

“It’s a contemporary sedan which not only matches but exceedscustomer expectations and this milestone is a testimony that Amaze has struck the right chord withIndian customers. With 42 percent first time buyers opting for the Amaze, we believe it’s a great choice as firstcar for customers, which offers status of a much bigger sedan and great peace of mind with its lowestcost of maintenance to suit their budget,” he added.

The company also reveals that being a popular model across metros and non-metros, Tier 1 markets have contributedto almost 44 percent of the overall volumes while Tier 2 and Tier 3 combined drive 56 percent of its sales. Also, with the growing trend towards automatic transmission models among customers, the share of automaticsin the Amaze has also increased from 9 percent in the first-generation model to more than 20 percent in the second-generation on sale right now.

Now, as its arch rival – the Maruti Suzuki Dzire – goes petrol-only in the BS VI emissions regime, the Amaze has the added advantage of pulling more customers from Tier 2 towns towards its diesel powertrain in the offing. It would be interesting to see how the Hyundai Aura with its 1.2-litre diesel engine and the Honda Amaze fill the void or what seems of it, left by the extinction of the Maruti’s diesel bestseller.