Tiago, Nexon & Tigor help Tata Motors BEAT Honda in India

After beating Honda in terms of sales for the last 10 months, Tata Motors is now firmly in 4th place in the Indian car market, behind Maruti, Hyundai and Mahindra. Tata has sold 149,284 cars in the last 10 months, beginning from April 2017, while Honda has sold only 144,802 cars in the same period.

The Tiago, Tigor, Hexa and Nexon have been Tata’s major comeback cars, contributing to at least 12,000 units per month. On the other hand, Honda is still able to have respectable numbers as the City and WR-V are still doing quite well with some support from the Amaze.

Going forward, we expect Tata to get much stronger and continue the sales momentum. In 2018, Tata will launch two high performance versions of the Tiago and Tigor. Branded JTP, which stands for Jayem Tata Performance, these cars will be affordable, high performance options, but much cheaper than competition.

The Tiago and Tigor JTP will be powered by a 1.2 liter turborcharged petrol engine with 108 Bhp and 150 Nm. A 5 speed manual gearbox with tweaked 5 speed gearbox ratios, stiffer suspension and stylistic changes will be offered on the cars. The Tiago JTP will start from under Rs. 6 lakhs while the Tigor JTP will start from less than Rs. 7 lakhs.

Tata Motors will also launch the AMT variants of the Nexon, in both petrol and diesel engine options. The Nexon AMTs are also expected to be priced very competitively, with both cars likely to undercut the Ford EcoSport AT and the Mahindra TUV300 AMT, to be the lowest priced automatic sub-4 meter compact SUVs of India.

Honda will respond with three new cars over the next one year. Of these, the all-new Amaze compact sedan is what Honda will bank on for big numbers. The other two cars – the 7 seat CR-V SUV and the all-new 10th generation Civic sedan, are likely to contribute to less than 1,000 units per month.

Via BusinessStandard