The Hindu Business Line : The blurring line between MPV and car

REMEMBER that saying - it's a bird, it's a plane, no it's Superman - about one of comic strips' most popular heroes? The domestic passenger car market is beginning to look as confusing with previous rigidities in vehicle categories blurring and companies chasing volumes that overlap segments.

The blurred definition is not so much in vehicle shapes, which don't deceive. It is in how companies describe their product, which looks like one, is claimed to offer the attributes of another and is sold as a third. In India, it was probably Toyota that pioneered this cross border volume chase.

In 2000, its Qualis looked like your typical multi-utility vehicle, except that it had a softer profile with smaller tyres and hence limited off-roading ability. Officially, it was less a MUV, more a car and the company sold it like one. Five years hence, the company has blurred definitions further with the Innova.

Sample this from the press statement - "by bringing the best of sedan and MPV in one car, Innova is a category creator in the Indian automobile market." It is positioned as the "first 3-row seating passenger car on Indian roads." Notwithstanding the exact meaning (or absence of it) contained therein, the vehicle looks like a van.

Why did this happen?

The reasons were partly betrayed in the comments of Mr Atsushi Toyoshima, Managing Director, TKM, who listed the factors responsible for Innova's drive into India.

Over the last five years, the market for `C' segment sedans grew by about 20 per cent every year, passenger vehicles were being used for longer family drives courtesy improved roads and in a merger of wants, utility vehicle owners were craving for bigger space and their passenger car counterparts, for better styling and riding comfort.

Put it down on paper and it isn't hard to figure out the resultant sketch - it's a MPV, it's a car, no it's Innova! Ironically, the vehicle's launch by one of the world's biggest automobile companies also helped explain likely reasons for the smaller Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd's (M&M) repeated rendezvous with cars. M&M has traditionally been the market leader in domestic utility vehicle sales.

Simply put, the dividing line between mid-sized cars and multi-purpose vehicles first grew thin, then, grew into a fat opportunity with volumes to be had in surrogate sales. Knowing cars have become critical for the manufacturer of multi-purpose vehicles and quite likely hence, that Mahindra habit of courting car manufacturing every once in a while.

Not to mention, one more sedan cast in a strategically important market segment either expands the overall market opportunity for versatile multi-purpose vehicles or at the very least, graduates customers up to affording one.

If you still have doubts about those blurring borders, revisit Toyota's projected Innova sales in India. Forty five thousand units in 2005 and the figure is still smouldering where they dropped it at the city's Hilton Towers.

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