Automotive News

Honda Siel Cars issued a press statement last week that they would be increasing the prices of their cars from the first week of January.

“There has been pressure from increased input costs and the company has decided to hike prices across all the production models between 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent by next week,” a Honda official said.

The prices of the Honda City, Honda Civic and the Honda Accord would be raised but they made it clear that they would not be tinkering with the price tag on the Honda CR-V.

Honda are also set to introduce their new version of the Honda Accord this month, so it seems a bit odd that they would hike the price of the older model.

General Motors India today announced that it has made a 19% (YoY, Year on Year) plus sales growth in the last month of 2006. They have issued a figure of 2,583 units sold in December 06′, versus the 2,163 figure last year.

GM claim to have sold 1,517 Chev Taveras and almost half the number of Chevrolet Aveos despite being the new kid on the block. The Optra sales were not too impressive with only 307 units sold this last month.

In 2006, GM has come out with two new models this past year which is the hit Chevrolet Aveo over the Ford Fiesta and the Chevrolet SRV which has not sold too many units but have got good reviews.

The company is optimistic about the next year with competition coming in from the likes of Mahindra and Mahindra partnering with Renault, the European carmaker. GM feel that they have got an ace up their sleeve with the new Chevrolet Aveo UVA.

The Aveo U-VA is the new hatch back and could be good competition to the likes to Hyundai Getz and the Maruti Swift.

They also have a new manufacturing unit opening up in Talegaon plus they have increased the capacity of their Halol plant to 85k units. The Talegaon plant is due to start latest by 2008.

Maruti Udyog will be looking ahead to the new year in an effort to raise the bar with the new Swift diesel and Estilo. The company has announced that they are going to increase the prices of the cars by up to Rs. 12,000. The amount of increase in each model is not known but the maximum should be in the Maruti Swift.

MUL had earlier raised prices in August 2006 and this will be another increase within only 5 months. The company say that the hike in prices is due to the rising input costs and freight rates.

On this news the stock did not react as much as expected but just closed marginally higher at Rs. 885.8 on 15 December.

Honda has now launched the new variant of the ever so famous CR-V which is a Sports Utility Vehicle. This variant of the car is going to be priced at 17.75 lacs which is more than the older version. The Honda CR-V is also available with Automatic transmission which will cost you a little bit over 18.5 lacs.

The prices mentioned are all ex-showroom Delhi and approximate figures. To add to these prices insurance and tax will take the price as high as 20lacs in some parts of India.