December and car buyers’ deep-discount dilemma

Like every December, it’s raining discounts for car buyers this year too, though there are some differences.

Dealers of Maruti, Hyundai, and Honda among others are showering incentives to close sales in a month when they have to go the extra mile to woo customers. Buyers typically wait for the new year to purchase vehicles to get a better resale value later.

Raining discounts

To sway the buyers, auto dealers have been aggressively advertising their offers even as they hint at big price hikes in January. Maruti’s ‘Five fantastic reasons to be in December’ ad talks about discounts starting from ₹34,000 for Dzire, ₹56,000 for Brezza and goes up to ₹63,000 for S- Presso. Similarly, Hyundai is offering discounts through its ‘December delight’ campaign starting with ₹50,000 for Santro, going up to ₹1 lakh for Elantra. For the end of the year, Audi is offering up to ₹2.5 lakh exchange bonus. Tata Motors and Fiat have also offered discounts. Honda Cars India also has benefits up to ₹2.50 lakh across all its models starting from Amaze to CR-V.

But this year the pandemic has led to supply issues for some automakers who are unable to offer discounts. Says Bashiruddin Babu Khan of Vibrant Ford, a dealer in Hyderabad, “Things have come back to normal in the last three months, but some manufacturers are facing supply issues so they are not able to offer discounts.”

In the cases such as Kia Sonet and Seltos, there is no discount as they already have a huge waitlist of customers.

Changing buyer mindset

The other change is a perceptible shift in the attitude of consumers, who don’t seem to be averse to buying in the last month of the year. Vinay Saboo of RKS Motors, a Maruti dealership, says, “December sales have been good so far. People have begun to take in their stride the issue of model change. The thinking is different now.” What could be changing the minds of consumers is that several car manufacturers, including Maruti, Mahindra & Mahindra, etc., have hinted at potential price rise from January citing increase in input costs.

Isuzu Motors India, in fact, announced an upcoming increase in the prices of its commercial pick-up range — D-MAX Regular Cab and D-MAX S-CAB with effect from January 1 on account of increasing input and distribution costs.

BMW Group India too will introduce a revised 2021 pricing for all BMW and Mini models effective January 4.

Prices will increase by up to 2 per cent across the portfolio. This is to offset the increasing input costs, said Vikram Pawah, President, BMW Group India.

With inputs from S Ronendra Singh in Delhi

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