New Fiat Palio On It's Way

By By: Vicky.in

Published: Friday, February 25, 2011, 15:26 [IST]

Fiat"s Palio will re-enter into India in a new name and enhanced changes. Fiat's Palio's new look is an attempt to secure a marginal share in the Indian car market after a long spell of absence. This new Fiat Palio will be positioned below its Punto hatchback and will be powered with 1.0L petrol and 1.3L multijet diesel engines. Some time back Fiat had to withdraw its hatchback in a bid to promote its Grande Punto. The car is currently on sale in Euro III markets in the domestic area which are manufactured from its Ranjangaon plant. During the nine month period of this fiscal this car could reach 300-400 owners. This could muster a total volume for this period to 15184 units against 25920 units sold in the previous year. The worst figure of the JV in terms of sale was in December with 271 units.

The company"s VP for commercial said the company has been evaluating the prospects of this new Fiat Palio lauch as there are lot of speculations in the market about this vehicle. This new Palio is included in the sub-small car segment at Rs4 lakhs wherein there are Chevrolet Spark, Beat, Tata Indica, Ford Figo and Hyundai Santro Xing. He said since this segment has more potential Fiat is contemplating to step into this in a fashioned manner with the New Fiat Palio. He made it clear that the need of the hour is to win back the customers" confidence.

Currently the company is operating in India under a JV with Tata Motors on 50:50 stake. The apex body of Fiat is Fiat SpA and the JV has been in effect since 2007. Tata Motors entered into this JV for getting benefit of Fiat engine technology and the operations are running at an investment of Rs4000 crore. The plant in Ranjangaon takes care of delivering Fiat and Tata cars and engines. With the relaunch the company is aiming to grab 5% share in the domestic market with sale of 1,30,000 annual units before 2014.

The ongoing market for Fiat in the Indian market has got Fiat Grande Punto and Fiat Linea. Since the JV, the sale volume for Tata-Fiat combination has been on the decline. But Tata Motors took necessary steps to revive the sale volume for these vehicles by increasing the dealer network. The VP said the initial entry of this JV was with 100 dealers which has now became 170 spread in 130 locations across the country. An observation from the senior VP for equity research, Fortune Securities, there had been instances when companies like Maruti and Hyundai faced failures with the relaunches of Versa and Getz respectively. He said Fiat"s success run will be based on new lines of models to displace the existing models in potential markets of metro cities.

Article Published On: Friday, February 25, 2011, 13:34 [IST]

Read more on: #fiat #indian car market #new car

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