India 1st Quarter 2015: Maruti and Hyundai dominate market up 2%

The Maruti Alto continues to dominate the Indian market.

* See the Top 15 best-selling brands and Top 70 models by clicking on the title *

The Indian new car market is revving back into gear: up 2% year-on-year over the first quarter of 2015 to 675.858 units – note this figure doesn’t include commercial vehicle, neither carmakers not sharing official sales for the period like Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo, and the total market should be around 720.000 units over the period. Going against global trends, the Indian market is consolidating itself rather than fragmenting, with 5 of the Top 6 manufacturers improving frankly faster than the market and now adding up to a whopping 92% of the market vs. 87.2% a year ago.

The Innova helps Toyota up 29% in India so far in 2015.

Toyota (+29%) is the best performer, followed by Tata (+20%), Honda (+19%), Hyundai (+9%) and Maruti Suzuki (+6%), taking fast steps to a gargantuan 50% market share at 46.9% vs. 45.2% over Q1 2014. Datsun disappoints, holding just 0.7% of the Indian market (5.008 sales) despite the addition of the Go+ MPV, and pulling Nissan down 39% to 1.1%.

The Hyundai Elite i20 cracks the Indian Top 5 over Q1 2015.

The Top 4 best-selling models are all Marutis and remain unchanged year-on-year: the Alto is ahead, followed by the Swift, DZire and Wagon R. But the main event in the model sales charts is the coming of age of the Hyundai i20, with the new generation ‘Elite’ taking the nameplate to unchartered territory: up 145% on a year ago to 32.617 units and breaking its all-time monthly volume record in the process (12.812 in March). This brings the number of Hyundais inside the Indian Top 10 to 3 along with the Grand i10 at #7 and the Eon at #10.

Most successful new entrant: the Maruti Ciaz

The Maruti Ciaz is the most successful all-new nameplate, landing at #15 thanks to 15.666 units sold in 3 months, making it a whopping 8 Marutis ranking inside the Top 15. Other newcomers include the Honda Mobilio, Tata Zest, Bolt and Datsun GO+. Finally, notice the Datsun GO already down year-on-year at -2% to just 2,022 units vs. 5.568 for the Tata Nano (-23%).

Full Q1 2015 Top 15 brands and Top 70 models vs. Full Q1 2014 figures below.