The Hindu Business Line : Toyota Kirloskar Motor hopes Corolla Altis will drive sales

New Delhi, Sept. 5 Toyota Kirloskar Motor expects a 26 per cent jump in sales to 63,000 units by December 2008, undeterred by the prevailing market scenario of high interest rates and inflation.

Of its overall portfolio of cars, it would sell 20,000 units of its tenth-generation Corolla Altis, which was launched on Thursday.

“We have named the new Corolla as Altis, a name derived from Altitudeness… So our goal is to sell 2,000 vehicles a month and 8,000 units by December,” said Mr Vikram Kirloskar, Vice-Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), the joint venture company between Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan and Kirloskar Group.

The company has priced its premium sedan Corolla Altis at an introductory price of Rs 10.83 lakh for the manual transmission base model up and Rs 12.86 lakh (ex-showroom New Delhi) for the top-end automatic transmission model. The new car, which competes with the likes of Honda Civic , Volkswagen Jetta and Skoda Octavia, is equipped with a 1.8-litre petrol engine.

Toyota Kirloskar’s Managing Director, Mr Hiroshi Nakagawa, said, “Toyota has been looking at India as an important market. The launch of Altis is a step in that direction. Unfortunately, we did not have much experience in the past ten years. Now is the time for us to jumpstart.”

He said that Toyota was aiming to capture a 10 per cent market share by 2015, which it earlier hoped to achieve by 2010.

Mr Nakagawa, however, admitted, “At that time we were slightly more optimistic about our position in the market. We have had a lot of problems. We have gone slow in introducing newer models. But now, with us launching a series of models, including a small car, we hope to achieve our target.” The company plans to begin production of its small car by 2010,

Diesel plans

Toyota estimates the domestic passenger vehicles market to double from the current two million units to four million units by 2015. With last year’s sales of 50,000, the company’s current market share stands at around three per cent of the domestic passenger car market.

The company also stated that it was studying the market for introducing a diesel variant in its models.

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