Maruti Suzuki Alto Speeds Past 3 Million Units Milestone

 

Maruti Suzuki Alto has gone past the legendary 800 to become the company's highest volumes model ever - and in turn India's highest too. The humble Alto has seen quite a journey - and of course has reached almost every production and sales milestone faster than its predecessor.

 

When it was launched in 2000, the Alto was seen as a premium offering, as in many ways it was a replacement for the very popular Zen.

True to Maruti Suzuki's India strategy though, the Zen wasn't phased out but the Alto drove in alongside it. Maruti Suzuki offered the Alto in two variants - the 796cc LX and the 1100 cc VX - that had the more powerful Wagon R engine, and better interiors.

By 2001 Hyundai had upped the ante with power steering on the Santro, and the Alto (along with several Maruti models) also went the power steering way - adding an 'i' to the variant names - hence we got LXi and VXi.

By late 2003, it was evident that Maruti aimed to take the Alto down the 800 road, when it launched the no frills, non-AC variant and also dropped prices of the range by over 20,000

The Alto remains India's largest selling car by volume for over a decade.

It has also notched up other firsts like being the first car to achieve over 2,00,000 unit sales in a single year - in 2006 - a figure it hasn't dropped below for over a decade now (it has already sold 220,035 units until January 2016 of the on-going fiscal)

Soon after, the ageing 800 started to go into partial retirement mode (even though that formally happened much later in January 2014). Since then, the Alto has been the volumes hero for Maruti Suzuki.

In February 2008 the Alto crossed the 1 million units production mark, and followed it up with a domestic sales milestone of the same number in November of the same year.

The strength of the Alto nameplate allowed Maruti to relaunch a powerful engine variant when it drove in with the K10, although with the 998cc K-Series engine, unlike the erstwhile 1100c.

The K10 launch accelerated the story, even as rivals like the Hyundai Eon and subsequently the Datsun Go tried to chip away at the massive market share the Alto had gained.

All of this has meant the brand and the car remained more than relevant and held volumes, in fact increasing them to a peak of 346,840 units in 2010-11.

The following year too it sold over 3 lakh units at 308,288 units.

This helps explain how the first million took 8 years, while it has done twice that number in the following 8.

The second million came in 2013, which means the 3rd million is the fastest - reflecting not just the growth in the Indian car market, but also the customer's blind faith in the 'Alto' name

The new look Alto 800 won the NDTV Car and Bike Entry Hatchback Award in 2013 - which validated the company's claim on how much work was carried out to alter the vehicle, despite maintaining the same platform.