Motown monsoon carnival

Automobile sales growth in July remained robust and is on course to create record this year as new models such as Ford’s Figo, Tata’s Nano and Volkswagen’s Polo draw customers, but trucks’ growth rate may taper off due to high base last year. Domestic sales including two wheelers, cars and trucks grew 32% to 12.37 lakh units in July, from a year earlier, data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers shows. Car sales grew 37% to 2.02 lakh, compared with China’s 13.6% where 9.5 lakh units were sold. Indian automobile industry is growing at a fast clip leading to capacity constraints and delay in deliveries as consumers are lured by attractively priced models and abundant funding from banks. Japan’s Nissan, Germany’s Volkswagen and the Tatas are stepping on the gas to benefit from the forecast 8.5% economic growth. The industry body last month forecast 12-13% growth in car sales for the year.But the reality may be far better than that. Passenger car segment may grow 14-16% in FY 2011 as sales could continue to grow in the second half of the fiscal. Car sales in the first four months of the fiscal up to July, gained 34% to 7.56 lakh units from a year earlier despite capacity constraints. But companies are expanding to meet the demand. Maruti Suzuki, whose market share fell to 47.7% in April-July despite record sales, plans to raise capacity and last week launched two new variants of its best selling model Alto. It plans to launch this month a fuel efficient gas variants of its five existing models —Alto, Estilo, WagonR, Eeco and SX4. Car sales at Hyundai Motor India grew 24% to 28,811 while at Tata Motors it was 69% to 24,613 led by small car Nano. Sales of motorcycles grew 30% to 9.38 lakh in July over a year ago, while truck sales jumped 37% to 51,481. Truck and bus sales at Tata Motors rose 30% in July to 30,827, while Ashok Leyland’s grew 69% to 6,022 vehicles. Vehicle exports in July soared 42% to 1.98 lakh units led by two wheelers even as exports of cars grew 3% to 34,699.