As usual, this is the best season to buy a car. With the festival season kicking off with Ganesh Chaturthi on September 5, followed by a spate of other celebrations continuing till November, manufacturers are offering huge discounts, reports Malyaban Ghosh in Mumbai.
To be sure, the discounts are not on newer launches, which are selling like hot cakes, but on older models, sales of which have either not been doing too well or where there’s no waiting period for them.
So, while there won’t be discounts on cars like the Baleno and Vitara Brezza from Maruti Suzuki, or the Creta and i20 from Hyundai, one can get attractive discounts on cars like the Alto,IHS Automotive, Swift and Dzire from Maruti. From the Hyundai stable, discounts are available on the Eon, Grand i10 and Verna.
Typically, the festival period (September to November) accounts for one-third of the total sales during a year. Last year (FY16) during September-November, sales in the domestic market stood at 7,37,460 units while total sales for FY16 stood at 27,89,678 units, which was 26.43% of the total sales.
Puneet Gupta, associate director of IHS Automotive, expects the volume growth in the three-month festival period this year to increase by at least 15% year-on-year.