Honda City remains numero uno in mid-size sedan segment

Honda Cars India Ltd’s (HCIL) City continues to lord over the mid-size sedan space, with cumulative sales of 21,826 units during January-December 2020, despite uncertainties over its Greater Noida facility and continued impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The City maintained a decent gap with its competitors, including Hyundai Motor’s Verna and Maruti Suzuki Ciaz. While Hyundai Motor India sold 14,658 units of Verna during the year, Maurti Suzuki sold 14,609 units of the Ciaz.

Sales number of the City however, were much higher during 2019. This is due to the effect of the pandemic and lockdown in 2020. Since its first launch in 1998, HCIL has sold around 8.17 lakh units of the City in the domestic market.

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This is the fifth generation of the Honda City that’s running in India, and since its launch in July 2020, it has once again exceeded the benchmarks with its premium design, technological prowess, unmatched comfort, advanced safety and connectivity, the company said. The Honda City’s market share in December 2020 stood at 41 per cent in its segment.

The City is also contributing to the overall growth of the mid-size sedan segment, which grew by 10 per cent in the July-December period.

According to the latest data shared by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the cumulative sales for the segment during July-December 2020 stood at 45,277 units, compared to 41,122 units in the same period of the previous year. Honda City’s cumulative sales during July-December 2020 stood at 17,347 units.

“The City brand has been synonymous with Honda in India. Continuously re-inventing itself, each generation of the Honda City has offered new technologies and value propositions to enthral its customers, creating a benchmark for quality and trust in the process,” Rajesh Goel, Senior Vice President and Director - Marketing & Sales, HCIL, said.

According to customers, it is also a trust that Honda has built over the years for its cars. “I have a Honda City which I bought in December 2016 and I didn’t even take a test-drive of the car. I directly went to the showroom and booked the car. It was the trust I had about this car and I still have no complaints against it,” said Gaurav Bhamra, a banker based out of Delhi.

The fifth generation City is powered by the newly introduced 1.5L i-VTEC DOHC engine with VTC in the petrol version, and the refined 1.5L i-DTEC diesel engine.

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Customers of City have always been discerning, and as per current sales trend, the top-end ZX variant with numerous segment-first features has got the maximum demand of almost 50 per cent, the company added.

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