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The Mahindra Scorpio first hit its highest ever sales tally for a single month way back in March 2007. That record of 4,769 units stood for six years till last month, when sales surged past the 5,000-unit mark.
It was bound to happen. Scorpio sales have been averaging 4,400 units a month for a little over a year now. The May blitzkrieg of 5,165 units marks a new high for the vehicle, which made its debut a little over a decade ago.
SUV focus
Pawan Goenka is pleased but not euphoric. “To tell the truth, I do not get really excited about a single month’s sales. I would like to add, though, that the Scorpio is truly a remarkable vehicle,” the President of M&M’s Automotive & Farm Equipment Sectors told Business Line .
But the Scorpio holds special memories for Goenka because he was entrusted with the responsibility of making this project a reality. At that point in time, during the late-1990s, M&M had just broken off with Ford in a car joint venture. It had decided to focus instead on the SUV space and earmarked a substantial Rs 600 crore for Project Scorpio.
To that extent, it was a do-or-die product for the company. Goenka, a General Motors veteran, realised there was a lot of hard work ahead with absolutely no indication of how the market would react to the product.
The Scorpio, however, took off with a bang and gradually established M&M as a force in the SUV segment. “Over the years, we have constantly tried to create better value for our Scorpio customers and this is clearly working,” Goenka says.
New path
At the time of its launch, in 2002, the vehicle was positioned as a car, but today it is perceived as a “true SUV”. The Mahindra corporate brand, which took second place then, has since grown stronger over the years.
The best seller is the mass market Bolero, which averages nearly 9,500 units each month, while the recently launched XUV500 does around 3,000 units. Yet, it is the Scorpio that still has a special place in the M&M ecosystem because the SUV had set the company on a new growth path which recently culminated in the acquisition of South Korea’s SsangYong Motor.
Can 5,000-plus burst be sustained? The auto market is not in the best of shape and companies like M&M face higher excise duty for their product range.
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