Maruti Suzuki Is Trying A New Thing To Shore Up Small Car Sales

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. is pulling out all stops to shore up sales of its small cars, including a limited edition offering—a first in four decades of selling cars.

The new Swift, however, is emerging as a bright spot.

Maruti Suzuki has clocked 40,000 bookings of the new Swift in just one month, despite the lack of a CNG variant, which will be launched in the coming months. About 83% of the new bookings are for the manual powertrain. Demand is concentrated in the mid-spec variants (50%), followed by the top-end (39%) and then the base model.

“The new Swift is already our best-selling model,” Banerjee said. “The CNG variant will be out in a few months. That should shore up our volumes…” That’s noteworthy, since one in every three cars sold by Maruti Suzuki is now gas-propelled.