VW India finally decided to address the need of the hour. VW India on Sunday announced they will be introducing a small car which will be positioned below VW Polo hatchback. Compact car segment witnessed consistent growth for the last few years and is expected to maintain the same momentum for atleast five years from now. Whoever the player in our market, if they are really interested to grab market share they should have a good selling small car in their portfolio. VW too confirming this fact by announcing their small car plan, they are expected to offer first small car by 2013.
“Believe me, we will have something smaller than the Polo. We are working on it,” Volkswagen Group’s India Communication Head Kurt Rippholz said in Wolfsburg, Germany. “First you have to conceptualise and then assess the market potential,” Rippholz added. Though he said other details are under finalization, we expect bringing a small car to India is not a big deal for VW, because they have many well proven small cars plying in European markets.
India is the second fastest growing small car market in the world after China. So no one can miss out this lucrative market so easily. In India, the 75% of the total car sale is contributed by this segment and the previous year recorded over 2million units car sales. Maruti Suzuki is maintaining the leadership by capturing 55% market share of total cars sold in our market. But others like Hyundai, Tata, Fiat, Ford and GM joined the race and made this market more price competitive. Japanese folks like Nissan, Toyota and Honda too want to bring their small car offering soon.
So which small car will be landing here with the VW badge? will it be Fox or Ebisa? but listen to Mr. Rippholz’s view on this “There’s the Fox in Brazil and Ebisa that’s sold in Spain. But India is a different market. First, we have to decide which car will it be.” So VW India’s small car is still taking it’s shape. We, Wheelosphere believe VW will bring UP! to India as we reported earlier. Recently VW had acquired significant stake of Japanese major Suzuki Motors Co. This acquisition will definitely enhance the competency of VW in lean and low cost manufacturing areas.
So to cut it short, we are not far away from driving a German engineered small car on our India roads. It could be just a matter of another one year or two.
Coming years could be significant period for VW India, already they are all set to launch the sedan called Vento based on Polo platform by next month. Now the news of small car launch is evolving, we agree it’s too early predict features and timelines of this small car, but this could be one of the development which every one watching for, let it be other small car manufacturers or car buyers and enthusiasts. We will be closely following this development story so be with us for first hand report on VW India’s small car development process by subscribing to our daily news letters.
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