India's largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki continued strong sales of its Vitara Brezza compact SUV in September. The Indo-Japanese marque sold 9,375 units last month. The company also retained its numero uno position in the UV sales keeping Hyundai Creta and Toyota Innova Crysta at bay.
Hyundai India sold 8,835 units of Creta in September to become the second best-selling UV. Toyota Innova Crysta found 7,300 takers last month. Best selling SUV in India for the past 11 years, Mahindra's Bolero managed to sell only 5,744 units.
Riding on Vitara Brezza, Maruti Suzuki recorded 191 per cent growth in UV sales in September. The company sold 18,423 units of its UV models in September against 6,331 in the same period last year. Maruti Suzuki sold 91,959 units of UVs in the first six month of this financial year registering a growth of 151 per cent against 36,633 units in April-September 2015. The spike in demand is certainly due to the arrival of Vitara Brezza in March 2016.
Maruti Suzuki has sold over 50,000 units of Vitara Brezza since its entry in the Indian market and about the same number is yet to be delivered against confirmed orders. The current waiting period of Vitara Brezza stands at seven months depending on the variant. Despite an increase in the production of the compact SUV to 10,000 units from July, Maruti Suzuki is still struggling to meet the demands.
Vitara Brezza is Maruti Suzuki's first model to be fully developed in India by its R&D team led by CV Raman. The compact SUV is powered by a 200 DDis 1248cc diesel engine that develops 88.5bhp at 4,000rpm and 200Nm of torque at 1,750rpm mated to a five-speed manual gearbox. It boasts of best-in-class fuel efficiency of 24.3 kmpl.