The fight between the Hyundai Santro and Maruti WagonR has been a silent one. This is not a rivalry you will see playing out on your television screens with the brands taking potshots at each other via 60-second commercials. That is something the cola majors enjoy doing.

Even Nestle and Cadbury have locked horns in recent times with the former spoofing the latter?s Paheli Tarikh ad, which hit the small screen in June-July this year. Santro and WagonR have been different in that sense. Their battle has been fought on the streets, literally.

No war of words here. It is plain sales numbers that count. And from the looks of it, WagonR is leading the race for domination of the tall-boy market, though the concept was introduced in India by HMIL with the Santro.

According to data provided by consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan, the WagonR is ahead of the Santro in terms of cumulative sales for the period stretching from January to July 2009. The figure stood at 89,099 units for the WagonR and 45,369 units for the Santro. In other words, the WagonR led the Santro by a hefty 96.4% in sales for that period. This margin, in fact, is not lost on its rival. Arvind Saxena, senior vice-president, marketing and sales, Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) admits there has been a drop in the sales of the Santro over the last few months. ?There is a decrease,? he says. This is one of the reasons why HMIL unveiled a spruced up version of the Santro last week. The new Santro has added many features to considerably raise the bar for cars in this segment.

HMIL would know what a product revision could do to sales. Archrival Maruti was able to gain an edge over it in the tall-boy market following a few changes it made in the WagonR in July 2007. ?Basically some changes in terms of design, look and feel were made,? says Mayank Pareek, executive officer, marketing and sales, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI). ?The multi-fuel variant, which allows users to switch from petrol to LPG, was also launched at the same time,? he adds.

This was the turning point for the WagonR. The vehicle has been on an upward climb since then. Data provided by brokerage firm IDFC-SSKI proves this. It shows that sales of WagonR did start climbing from October 2007 following refurbishment of the vehicle in July that year (check chart for details). The fight was so fierce that it took the WagonR three months to widen the gap between it and its rival, the Santro.

The sales margin went up by over 1,500 units that month (12,314 units for the WagonR versus 10,655 units for the Santro). Before that, the margin was thin, below 1,000 units, to be precise, implying that the field was wide open for any of the two brands to dominate. Santro led the sales chart in July and September that year (10,827 and 12,990 units to WagonR?s 10,029 and 12,573 units), while WagonR was the leader in August (11,748 units to Santro?s 11,699 units). Prior to the rejig, the WagonR?s sales were lower than that of the Santro. ?There was need to give the product a push. The changes we introduced allowed us to do that,? says Pareek. ?The result is there for everybody to see.?

Ironically, the fight between the Santro and the WagonR has been decade-long with the former dominating the tall-boy market for better part of the period. Despite being one of the world?s first tall-boy designs?along with models from Daihatsu and Daewoo?the WagonR (created as per the Kei-Jidosha or small car specifications of the Japanese market) was not first-to-market in India. A less avantgarde version of the Hyundai Atos (Santro in India) was the first tall-boy design to hit the Indian roads.

It preempted the WagonR by a good two years.

Indeed, HMIL was quick to gauge the need for a compact car that had a high roof, which could be taken to work as well as for family outings/get-togethers comfortably seating four to five people. ?The Santro fit the bill perfectly,? says an auto analyst based in Mumbai. Not one to sit still though, Maruti launched the WagonR in India in 1999 (the Santro was launched in September 1998). But it has taken the auto major some time to crack open the tall-boy market. ?It hasn?t been easy for Maruti,? says VG Ramakrishnan, director, automotive and transportation, Frost & Sullivan.

?But it is leading now.?

This war in a sense is reflective of the larger battle on between Maruti and Hyundai for the domination of the A2 segment?the largest passenger car market in the country. According to data provided by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the market share of Hyundai and Maruti in the A2 segment, based on sales numbers for the April-July 2009 period, is 58.04% and 24.38% respectively. Maruti has six models at the moment to Hyundai?s four. Of the six that Maruti has, three are what could fit the tall- boy order (WagonR, Estilo and Ritz), besides the Alto, Swift and A-Star. HMIL has two tall cars, the Santro and the i10, while the Getz and the i20 are regular compact cars. Hyundai, for the record, is planning to phase out the Getz, introduced in 2004, by 2011. The i20, in contrast, has been a newer entrant to the Hyundai stable, launched in December last year.

The i10 (launched in October 2007) in particular has been the strong one for Hyundai in its A2 portfolio. Though a slow starter, the vehicle has been clocking good sales since January 2008. The January to June 2009 period has been particularly good for the i10, with the vehicle registering a sales growth of 11.09% over the same period in 2008. The Santro, on the other hand, has seen sales come down by 14.67% in the same time.

From the looks of it, the i10 has been eating into the sales of the Santro. At the moment, the i10 is doing something around 10,000-11,000 units in sales to Santro?s 5,000-6,000 units (see chart). Says Ramnath S, director, research, IDFC-SSKI, ?The i10 is a newer product in comparison to the Santro. The migration is inevitable.? This, despite the fact, that the Santro is available at a slightly lower price point. It begins from Rs 2.6 lakh (non-AC version) going up to Rs 3.8 lakh. The i10 begins from Rs 3.3 lakh going over Rs 5 lakh.

Speculation is rife that the Santro?s price range may go up following the launch of the revised version, but there is no confirmation from the company on this. Saxena of HMIL says, ?Look at it this way. We have two brands as opposed to one in the segment. The sales numbers are higher that way. We stand to gain as a result of this.?

Saxena?s statement is indicative of the multi-product strategy of the company especially when it comes to the A2 segment. MSI also has a similar model. ?We believe in a multi-product approach,? admits Pareek. ?Dependence on one product is not such a great idea in our view.? This explains why the moment the Estilo, the second tall-boy in the MSI stable, started losing steam in terms of sales, the company promptly choose to relaunch the vehicle in August this year. On an average, the Estilo has been doing about 3,000-4,000 units per month.

But the January-July 2009 period has not been good for it. But that?s true for most other passenger cars. Sales came down by 36.61% for the seven-month period as opposed to the corresponding period last year.

The company is hoping that the relaunched vehicle can do what the WagonR did when changes were made to it in July 2007. ?Let?s see how it does,? says Pareek.

Besides HMIL and MSI, none of the other players has an entire line-up of compact cars vying for consumer attention. Of course, Fiat India is working hard at it. It has slowly but steadily increased its offerings in the A2 segment adding the Grande Punto, which was launched in June this year, to the Palio and the Fiat 500, that comes to India as a completely built unit. General Motors has two cars, the Spark and the Aveo U-VA, while Ford Motors, Skoda Auto and Tata Motors have one product each, the Fusion, Fabia and Indica respectively. Of course, the market share of these companies is nowhere next to HMIL, let alone Maruti, the largest car maker in the country and leader in the A2 segment. HMIL, for the record, is the second-largest car maker in India. It is in second position in the A2 segment as well.

As the battle rages on between the two arch rivals, it is advantage Maruti for now.