Honda Brio Car For Small Cities

By By: Vicky.in

Published: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 13:18 [IST]

Honda Siel Cars has set a new strategy to promote its upcoming compact Brio. The move will find the penetration into small cities and towns in a tie-up with banking sectors. Honda sees this as a remedy to compensate the failure of its Jazz hatchback, said its VP. He added that the car will meet the demands of larger family dwelling in major cities and small towns as well. Honda is launching this compact in this September at the price of Rs5 lakhs. This is not the first attempt from auto sector as all other major players have identified the small towns as major hunting source to boost the sale of their products. The analysis points out that this segment constituted 30%of sale in 2010. All these years, Honda has been targeting the metros with its portfolio of Civic, Accord, Jazz, CR-V and Cit while the remaining big players have entered into this small town segment seeking more sale volumes.

Honda is pinning on the hope of countering the likes of Maruti Swift, Ford Figo and Hyundai i20 by retaining its status in the Indian car market. Similar to Tata Motors which offers financial assistance through its efforts, Honda is aiming to tap the regional and government owned banking sectors to secure financial aid for the customers. Even the co-operative banks too have been approached in this regard to cater to the needs of customers, said the VP. The move indicates that Honda is on the verge of rectifying the flaws occurred with its Jazz, which incurred a fall in sale by 40%with the sale of 3731 units during April-December 2010 period which was 6247 units in the same period of 2009.

Brio is the outcome of Honda"s 5-year stint in R&D to meet the exact demands and to suit the specific needs of the Indian customers and roads. As a 5-seater it cannot still meet the small car segment to face 10% tax despite 22% tax levied on larger sized vehicles. As per the specifications, cars having the measurement of less than 4 meters under 1200cc and 1500cc are to be deemed as small cars. The VP said that Brio will meet the demands in all ways to pose the challenge to Maruti Swift, i20, Figo andPolo and still lesser in price than its own Jazz premium hatch. Once the price is set to counter the likes of other players, he added, Honda will enter into those regions of dearth.

The current strength of Honda"s network is 150 spread in 72 cities from its 120 existed in the previous year. The expanded areas include Asansol, Hubli , Gorakpur , Mandi, Nellore, Alwar, Coonoor and Dibrugarh. Honda"s recent performance is not up to the mark and it depends heavily on this Brio to reach a new landmark of sale in India.

Article Published On: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 13:10 [IST]

Read more on: #cars #honda #indian car market

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