Toyota & Daihatsu Plan To Take On Maruti Suzuki In Small Car Segment

Japanese manufacturers have been dominating the automobile sector in India for a while. Maruti Suzuki has been the leader in terms of sales for small vehicles. No other Japanese, Italian or German manufacturer has been capable of disrupting their dominance.

Maruti Suzuki had taken the early lead with its Maruti 800 model, which was the choice of most people back in the days. They have recently launched their Celerio and Alto K10, which has been well appreciated by customers.

Toyota has decided its time to compete head on with its Japanese competitors. They are working together with Daihatsu on developing a small car vehicle. Daihatsu is most likely to engineer the small car by themselves and will receive Toyota badging, so it can be sold in their wide India network.

Toyota currently offers a wide range of products in India. They include Etios Liva, Etios Cross, Etios, Corolla Altis, Camry, Prius, Innova, Fortuner, Land Cruiser and Land Cruiser Prado. Their small vehicles, however, has not been able to do well in India.

Toyota India is finding reasons as to why their Etios Liva has been struggling. The Japanese manufacturer has been using quality parts and components, however, customers have not taken their products positively for some reason.

The plan is that Daihatsu will produce a small car for Toyota using local parts and affordable components. All these are expected to bring the price of a vehicle low and make it highly competitive. There is a problem though if a vehicle is made too cheap as people will doubt its quality then.

Daihatsu Motor Co. Ltd is among the oldest Japanese automobile manufacturers. They are popularly known for their small and off-road models. The company was founded in March, 1907 and are situated in Osaka, Japan. They are currently owned by Toyota Group and will be helping them with India operations.