Maruti Baleno bookings cross the 100,000 mark

Customer bookings for the Baleno hatchback, Maruti Suzuki India’s global model, have crossed the 100,000 units mark since the car’s launch last October. Demand for the petrol model is higher than its diesel counterpart, according to a Nexa showroom in Gurgaon.

Not a surprising trend considering the government has implemented the diesel car ban in NCR and demand for petrol cars is growing across the country.   

The three- to four-month waiting period for the Baleno, which is sold through Maruti Suzuki’s premium Nexa outlets along with the S-Cross, has now shot up to 6-9 months across its nine variants. The most sought after trim is the Delta edition in the mid-trim level, both in petrol and diesel variants. Thus far about 45,000 Balenos have been delivered in around four months after its rollout.

A sales executive at the Nexa dealership in Gurgaon pegs the petrol sales to 60 percent of the total with the diesel portfolio contributing the balance. At present while the petrol trim is running a waiting of 6-7 months, the diesel is running a higher 8-9 months wait. The retailer attributes this to a lower demand for the diesel Baleno that has led to lower production at the carmaker’s end and hence lower supply. 

The waiting period for the Baleno is now running similar to that of the Celerio AMT hatchback when it was launched in January 2014, but that was due to the short supply of the automated manual transmission (AMT) kits. After the AMT kit manufacturer set up its plant at Manesar, the waiting period stabilised.  

Overall, the Baleno has been a winner from Maruti, which is seeing the recently launched Vitara Brezza compact SUV going the way. Maruti has also recently commenced exports of the made-in-India Baleno to Japan and Europe, a move which is believed to have cut into the numbers for domestic supply, according to sources.

Manufactured at the company’s Manesar plant, Baleno export shipments commenced for the first time to Japan to parent company Suzuki Motor Corp around end-January 2016 from the Mundra Port in Gujarat. This was followed by exports to Europe in February after an interregnum of about 3-4 years. The Baleno will be exported to about 100 global markets as part of Maruti Suzuki’s plan to carry forward the Indian government’s Make in India programme.