New Maruti Swift Diesel waiting periods to come down as Maruti to cut diesel engine exports to Hungary!

From Alphonso mangoes to Royal Enfield Bullets, exports have been much more worthwhile for Indian firms in outright monetary terms. This has often led to the Indian customer, in some cases having to endure poorer quality while on the other hand, having had to wait for atrocious periods of time to get his or her hands on high demand goods, mainly the ones which are exported too. The Maruti Swift, especially in diesel engine guise has had immense demand in the Indian car market, resulting in long waiting periods of up to four months for the diesel engined model.

New Maruti Suzuki Swift

While one way of managing waiting periods is to boost production, capacity constraints at Maruti means that this isn’t happening as soon as it should ideally have. So, Maruti will embark upon a brand new approach to reduce waiting period by more than a third. Maruti Suzuki, will cut back on exporting diesel engines to Hungary, over the next six months which will help the automaker to free up about 35,000 to 45,000 Maruti Swift Diesels for the Indian market.

What this essentially translates into is that, 3,000-4,000 more new Maruti Swift Diesel cars will be available each month for the domestic market, which could ease the pressure of long waiting period quite significantly. Along with this, Maruti will also boost production of the new Swift from 10,000 to 18,000 units per month to meet the heightened demand for the super popular hatchback, which is said to have clocked almost 40,000 bookings even before it’s official launch or price announcement.

Maruti expects to sell a mind boggling 18-20,000 new Swift cars every month after it’s launch in August 2011. The new Maruti Suzuki Swift will be launched on the 17th of August in India, and is expected to be priced at around INR 30,000 more than the existing variants. The new Swift is a bigger, better car with more space on the interior due to a larger wheelbase and overall length. Meanwhile, here are some bytes from Mr Mayank Pareek, Maruti Suzuki’s Managing Executive officer (Marketing and Sales).

New Maruti Suzuki Swift

We are reducing on export of diesel engines significantly to cater to the domestic demand. Currently we export about 35,000 to 45,000 units every year to Hungary. We will reduce it to almost negligible levels in the next six months. The additional engine that we get (after cutting exports) will go for the Swift in India. Production of Swift will be increased to about 17,000-18,000 units per month from an earlier 10,000-11,000 units earlier. Thus the waiting period will come down to 2-3 months from 3-4 months earlier.

While there has been tremendous hype created around the new Swift for the past few months because of the sheer faith of the Indian small car buyer in the Swift brand, which has consistently been a bestseller for more than half a decade, it would be very interestng to see whether Maruti manages to achieve the high forecasts it has for the new Swift in the face of the overall tapering demand that the Indian car market finds itself in the midst of.

On the other hand, the new Swift in a way could be the harbinger of good times or even a bright spot in the otherwise dreary growth forecasts of the Indian car industry for the next few months or so. For now though, it seems that the robust demand from the Indian market is finally forcing Maruti to concentrate on India rather than the more lucrative exports, as long waiting periods could simply mean curtains for the new Swift, especially in the face of heightened competition like the Toyota Etios Liva and the Honda Brio. We’ve said it before, we say it again, God bless competition!

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