Maruti Suzuki has ensured that it is not going to allow Venue to easily take the best selling Compact SUV throne. While Maruti has aggressively promoted Brezza is Aug-Sep’19 by launching a scheme wherein the company was offering free warranty for a period of five years or 1 lakh km to its customers across the country. Maruti is also working on the next-gen Brezza which shall sport a petrol engine.
Brezza also became the best selling SUV for Sep’19. The SUV sales (Compact + Mid) is shown here for reference –
Kia had all guns blazing in Sep’19 as well and was able to sell over 7.7k units in Sep’19. It outsold its Hyundai sibling ‘Creta’ by over 1000 units and became the Best Selling Mid-SUV for Sep’19. Thanks to the new entrants in the segment (Seltos, Hector); the Mid-SUV segment grew a healthy 12% in Sep’19 v/s Sep’18! But unfortunately all other brands registered a YoY degrowth. Scorpio came third in the segment and also its degrowth was meager -9%. However; XUV500 degrew a hefty -43% and particularly suffered lost due to new competition. Tata’s Harrier continues to lose ground and was not able to gain much even with the ‘All Black’ variant.
Toyota is all set to launch the Vellfire, which is a 6-seater luxury MPV from the Japanese carmaker. The car will hit Indian roads in October 2019 and 2 units of the model has already been dispatched from the plant last month. Official launch date, however, is yet to be announced. The MPV is brought via CBU (Completely Built Up) route under the government’s 2,500 unit import rule. The car is estimated to be priced around Rs 75 lakh and will gun up straight against the Mercedes -Benz V-Class that costs between Rs 68.40 lakh (Expression Line) – Rs 81.90 lakh (Exclusive Line).
Toyota Vellfire is bound to feature a petrol-hybrid powertrain that includes a 2.5L engine and an electric motor producing 150bhp and 143bhp respectively. Its combined power output stands at 197bhp. The luxury MPV will come with a CVT gearbox and AWD (all-wheel-drive) system. While the global-spec Toyota Vellfire features a 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system, a 360 degree surround view camera and a 10.2-inch screen for rear seat passengers; there is no clarity whether the India-spec version will offer these features or not.