Toyota Fortuner’s production has been cut and the discounts are reduced to just Rs. 50,000 as stocks almost ran out
Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) has the Fortuner as one of its top-selling vehicles in the Indian market. The full-size SUV along with Innova Crysta form the major chunk of Toyota’s monthly volumes but their numbers could not be left unaffected in the ongoing sales crisis.
Through 2019, the automobile industry has been reeling under one of the worst sales slowdowns in decades and every carmaker present in the country are affected by the volume slump due to several macroeconomic reasons and the arrival of BSVI emission regulations has created some kind of agitation into the minds of the customers.
While the festive season showed signs of improvement, it is far fetched from the reality as the slowdown is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. The decent MoM showing from automakers last month has given a glimmer of hope and it was mainly due to the myriad of discounts and benefits across segments.
To revive sales fortunes of the Fortuner, Toyota introduced the TRD Celebratory Edition a few months ago and it worked well to some extent. However, the range of discounts offered did play into its favour as Toyota posted 42% Month-on-Month sales increase last month with cumulative domestic sales of 1,302 units.
It helped the Fortuner to retain its number uno status in the segment ahead of Ford Endeavour, Mahindra Alturas G4, Isuzu MU-X and others. The Fortuner had been offered with discounts of up to Rs. 80,000 (corporate cash discount of Rs. 40,000 and exchange bonus of up to Rs. 40,000) to lure in new buyers into Toyota’s fold.
The increase in demand, as well as the soon-arriving BSVI norms, have led to the stocks almost finishing across the dealertships. Therefore, Toyota has cut the production of the BS4 Fortuner and the domino effect is that the discounts have been reduced to just Rs. 50,000.
It will be interesting to see how the sales volumes pan out in the coming months and the popular SUV will gain BSVI compliance ahead of the April 2020 deadline.