For the 3rd straight month, the Maruti Dzire has emerged as India’s highest selling car, beating the much more cheaper stablemate – the Alto. The new Dzire has been a tremendous success for Maruti Suzuki, who has sold more than 1 lakh units of the car within just 5 months of launch.
This feat also makes the compact sedan the fastest selling car in India. The Dzire’s sales for the last 3 months (August, September and October 2017) are 30,934, 34.305 and 20,610 units respectively. The Alto sold 21,521, 23,830 and 19947 units in the same period.
The new version of the car – which launched earlier this year – is offered with a new design, a new platform that uses light-weight steel, and completely revamped interiors and features. The car’s petrol and turbocharged diesel engines have been carried over from the older version.
The petrol engine is the 1.2 liter K-Series unit with 82 Bhp and 112 Nm while the diesel engine is the 1.3 liter Fiat Multijet unit with 74 Bhp-190 Nm. Both engines get 5 speed manual transmissions as standard. Maruti also offers AMT options on both petrol and diesel variants. ABS and twin airbags are now standard on all variants of the Dzire.
The key reason why there is so much demand for the Dzire is that both personal car buyers and cab operators prefer it. The rise of ride-hailing apps like Ola and Uber have sent a lot of cab orders through to Maruti, and the Dzire is the car that’s preferred by most buyers in the cab segment.
The new Dzire is sold only as a personal car though, while the older version is now offered as the ‘Dzire Tour’, cab-operator specific version. Maruti releases sales figures by combining both personal car sales and fleet sales, and this should explain the very large numbers. The car’s production has been boosted to meet the high demand.