Addressing a press conference, HMIL director (sales & marketing) BVR Subbu ruled out a price hike for Santro, saying that "there is nothing imminent about an increase in price".

Company officials said "the price of the Santro will only change if there is any change in extraneous factors such as inflation cost and budget next year".

These orders came in over a period of five days from October 8 to 12. The booking orders were collected from 70 Hyundai customer care centres in 55 cities across the country. The highest number of orders came from the north, where 5,507 full payment customer orders have been received. The southern region followed closely behind with 5,061 customer orders. The western region received 4,133 customer orders and the eastern region 769 orders.

The bookings are divided equally betweenthe base and the fully loaded versions. Deliveries for the Santro would commence on October 18. The company would clear all the orders till February 1999. In the first lot, 2,000 units would be despatched and by November-end, 5,000 units would be produced and shipped which would go up to 10,000 units by mid-January.

The direct customer orders (full payment made by customers) are approximately 33 per cent of the total orders received. Payments by finance companies with full credit appraisal of customer loan applications totalled 34 per cent.

"The customer bookings have surpassed our targets by over 54 per cent,'' Subbu said, adding that the company had set a conservative target of 6,000 bookings, a realistic target of 8,000 units and an optimistic target of 10,000 bookings.

On the low bookings from the eastern region, he said, "We were looking at low bookings from the region and expected to get only about 5 per cent of the market and the results have come up to our expectations".

The company hasalready set up 70 workshops across the country with 25 in the northern region, 20 each in the western and southern regions and only five in the eastern region. But with sales looking up over the years, the company will expand its service network.

Targeting the large and ever-expanding female car-driving population in India, HMIL is launching the `tulip club', an exclusive arrangement which aims at taking away the trouble involved at getting the car serviced. Under the arrangement, the company would pick up the cars for servicing right from the doorsteps and get them delivered.