Despite posting 11 percent sales de-growth Hyundai Verna led the C-segment for sedans with 3,299 units ahead of Honda City and Maruti Suzuki Ciaz
The C-segment for sedans had often been competitive with the leading model posting close to 6,000 units in recent past but the scenario has drastically changed. Maruti Suzuki introduced the facelifted Ciaz in August 2018 and it had good initial sales by registering over 6,200 units the following month but the numbers had shrunken gradually.
In February 2019, only 3,084 units were sold at a massive YoY de-growth of 37 percent as the Ciaz was positioned only as the third best in sales. Last month, the segment was led by Verna as Hyundai registered 3,299 units and despite being at the top, 18 percent sales decline was seen.
Just 26 units shy of the Verna was the segment’s arguably most popular nameplate, the Honda City. In a similar fashion to the other two models, the City encountered sales drop as well at 16 percent. The Yaris sedan, launched in May 2018, could not get as much sales as the brand would have desired and it has fallen to three digit sales since September 2018.
| S.No | Model | No. of units |
| 1. | Hyundai Verna | 3,299 |
| 2. | Honda City | 3,273 |
| 3. | Maruti Suzuki Ciaz | 3,084 |
| 4. | Skoda Rapid | 898 |
| 5. | VW Vento | 351 |
| 6. | Toyota Yaris | 350 |
February 2019 saw the second lowest sales tally for the Yaris as only 350 units were retailed. Recent reports suggest that Tata has opted not to develop a C-segment sedan envisaging the drop in sales and instead it is pursuing a ALFA (Agile Light Flexible Advanced) architecture based premium SUV internally called as Blackbird.
Skoda will more likely introduce the next generation Rapid and Volkswagen the next Vento in the early parts of next decade as SUVs have been the initial priority under the India 2.0 project with heavily localisation in agenda courtesy of the MQB A0 IN platform.
But, before them, Honda will be debuting the next-gen City next year and it will be followed by a comprehensive hybrid variant in 2021. The next sedan from Hyundai is the heavily updated version of the Elantra and it has already been spied testing. We can expect the launch to happen midway through this year to take on the new Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla Altis and Skoda Octavia.