Hyundai Eon

South Korea’s Hyundai has launched its new car directly pitted against Maruti Suzuki’s global top seller Alto, firing a warning shot across the bow of its bleeding arch rival which has been wounded by a strike at one of its plants. Eon, Hyundai’s first car developed from scratch for India and is aimed at the bulging middle of the country’s car market, has a starting price of Rs. 2.7 lakh, making it the first serious threat to the Alto’s seven year-old dominance of the country’s car market. The Alto, with 3.47 lakh cars sold last fiscal year, accounted for around 16% of all cars sold in India and is the top selling car model on the planet, having edged Volkswagen’s Gol & Golf and Fiat’s Punto. Hyundai aims to sell 1.5 lakh units of the Eon in a year, an ambitious target in a tepid car market and also given that the Alto took a few years after launch to reach this level of unit sales. Hyundai's most ambitious launch to date comes at a time Maruti has temporarily stopped Alto’s production because of a longstanding labour issues, now running into its third month, and which has left the country’s biggest carmaker dependent on a slender inventory to drive sales during the bumper festive period. Hyundai, meanwhile, has already filled its dealers with stocks of the new Eon, hoping to capitalise on the vacuum in the segment. Although it launched the new car only on Thursday, it had started producing the cars from mid-September to develop a buffer to meet high festive demand. Although past challengers have barely managed to make a dent on Alto’s sales, industry experts say this time could be different and are expecting a high-pitch battle in the small car segment completely dominated by Maruti. But Maruti Suzuki, which generates a quarter of its India sales from the Alto, was unfazed by the prospect of a new challenger on its turf. The company is working on an answer to Eon and will unveil an allnew small car with a new-age 800cc engine, company sources said. The Alto, launched in September 2000, has sold some 16.7 lakh units. Sales of the model, grew 46% in last fiscal year to 3.47 lakh units. Maruti sells 32,000 units of the Alto every month on average. In contrast, Hyundai managed to sell 34,286 units of its smallest car Santro in the first five months of this year.