New Hyundai Santro clocks 45,000 bookings: Pulls customers from Maruti WagonR

The Santro is setting milestones after milestones for Hyundai. Bookings for the car touched around 15,000 even before its launch and now the booking figures have reached 45,000 units. The Santro was launched on 21st of October this year while booking started on 10th of October. In the two months of its launch, the car has already made a place into the top ten selling cars list. With its current rate of growth, we expect that the new Santro would soon be seen among the top 5 selling cars, breaching the long dominance of Maruti Suzuki in the process.

The reason for Santro’s success can be attributed to various factors. Firstly, the car was named Santro which gave it a good reconnect with people and great market presence. Secondly, it comes with many segment first features, has a decent engine and also offers an automatic transmission. Hyundai’s hassle free after sales service is another thing which contributed to its success. Lastly, the attractive base price of Rs. 3.89 lakh made it a pretty good option in the segment, undercutting the likes of Maruti Suzuki WagonR and Celerio by a good margin.

Such has been the effect of the Santro in the market that the Celerio didn’t even had a place in the top 10 selling cars of November. The Celerio was a regular feature of the list and even made it to top 5 many times. Competitors like the Maruti Suzuki WagonR and Tata Tiago too felt the heat and reported a decline in sales. The old Santro was one of the most popular cars by the company and the latest iteration is set to repeat that again. Maruti meanwhile is working on the newer models of the WagonR and Celerio to take on

Speaking on the occasion, Puneet Anand, marketing group head at Hyundai Motors India, said

“Actually, if you see this mid compact segment, it used to be around 30,000 (units per month). We had the Celerio, the Tiago, and the Wagon R. But after the launch of Santro, this segment has already jumped to 36,000. So, not only have we increased the volume (of the segment), but we have also increased our visibility.”

The new Santro gets the same old 1.1-litre four cylinder petrol motor that is now tuned to meet the latest emission norms. It puts out 69 Bhp of power along with 99 Nm of torque and comes with a ARAI certified fuel economy of 20.3 Km/l. The transmission duties are taken care of by either a 5 speed manual of a 5 speed AMT gearbox. As a comparison, the Maruti Suzuki WagonR puts out 67 Bhp of power along with 90 Nm of torque and gets an ARAI certified fuel economy of 20.5 Km/l. It also gets both transmission options, a 5-speed manual along with a 5 speed automatic box.

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