With the year 2018 being a slow-growth one for India Auto Inc due to a weak economic environment, passenger vehicle sales in January 2019 do not show any bright signs yet. The country’s leading carmaker Maruti Suzuki India, which also indicates the performance of the entire PV space, has reported flat growth for the month.     

Maruti Suzuki registered total domestic sales of 142,150 units in the month, reporting a marginal growth of 1.1 percent over and above the 140,600 cumulative units it had clocked in the same month in 2018. Its entry level duo of the Alto and Wagon R went home to 33,408 buyers and remained absolute flat (January 2018: 33,316). Maruti launched the latest generation of the WagonR on January 23 and anticipates further growth from the popular hatchback which has garnered sales of over 2.2 million units for the company since its launch in 1999.

Its pack of compact cars which includes the Swift, Celerio, Ignis, Baleno and the Dzire, dwindled slightly by 3.5 percent and registered sales of 65,523 units (January 2018: 67,868).  The company also gave a mid-life refresh to the much popular Baleno hatchback, which has sold over 500,000 units for the Japanese carmaker in India, and now gets a host of features becoming standard right from its lower variants in its facelifted avatar.

While its Ciaz slumped a significant 42 percent to settle with sales of 2,934 units (January 2018: 5,062), Maruti’s quartet of UVs – the S-Cross, Vitara Brezza, Ertiga and Gypsy – clocked 22,430 units and registered growth of 8.4 percent (January 2018: 20,693). The Omni and the Eeco remained the ones to be witnessing the highest growth rate of 23.6 percent with sales of 15,145 units (January 2018: 12,250).