Aided by a 17-times jump in sales of its utility vehicles, mainly the recently launched Ertiga, car market leader Maruti Suzuki reported a 13 per cent increase in domestic sales in September 2012 over the same month last year. Domestic sales accounted for 88,801 units. Maruti sold 7,224 units of UVs (Gypsy, Grand Vitara and Ertiga) against 412 in September 2011. The Ertiga was launched last April.

The company’s exports were, however, down 23 per cent to 5,187 units. Total sales grew nearly 10 per cent to 93,988 units in September 2012 over the year-ago period.

This comes on the backdrop of a 35 per cent fall in domestic sales in August 2012, due to a labour unrest at its Manesar plant.

In general, September was a tough month for the automobile industry because of the fuel price hike, high interest rates and inflation.

Hyundai Motor India’s domestic sales fell 14 per cent to 30,851 units in September. Exports grew nearly four per cent to 22,707 units.

Tata Motors’ passenger vehicle sales were down 18 per cent, at 21,652 units in September. The company sold 5,491 units of the Nano, an 87 per cent increase over sales in September 2011.

Toyota Kirloskar Motor sold 12,115 units in September, a drop of 5 per cent compared with 12,807 units in the corresponding month last year. Bucking the general trend, its models such as Innova and Fortuner registered a 23 per cent and 21 per cent growth, respectively, during the month. Etios series fell by 25 per cent at 4,440 units compared with 5,926 units in the same period last year.

Ford India’s domestic sales dropped marginally to 7,794 units in September this year compared with 7,801 cars sold last year. Nissan India sold 3,574 cars in September.

Two-wheelers

TVS Motor Company registered a 22 per cent drop in total sales to 170,097 units.The company attributed last year’s higher sales to the early onset of the festival season, which falls in November this year.

The company’s three-wheeler segment, however, registered a record growth of 36 per cent to 5,005 units in September against 3,679 units in September last.

Commercial Vehicles

Tata Motors registered a five per cent growth in domestic CV sales, to 48,680 units.

Eicher trucks and buses recorded 31.9 per cent lower sales in September against the year-ago period. The biggest drop for it came in the commercial vehicle segment, which saw a fall of 27 per cent from 4,152 units in September last to 3,026 units. Other categories such as domestic bus segment grew 11.3 per cent.

> Heena.k@thehindu.co.in

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