The Hyundai Santro, a legendary car which has been iconic bedrock of the company in India since its launch in September 1998. Hyundai has sold over 13.5 lakh cars in India and exported over 5.35 lakh units since its inception. Santro has been on runway success for Hyundai and managed to achieve great numbers for them and still Santro is among the top selling cars for the South Korean car maker.
Hyundai Santro single handedly took the car maker to new heights and helped them to be a second largest car maker in India and largest car exporter in India. After spending 16 Golden years on Indian roads the last Santro was rolled out from Hyundai’s facility in Chennai in December 2014.
Hyundai Santro is still in demand so dip in sales or demand is not a reason for its discontinuation, Santro production end will make way for other cars like Grand i10 and Elite i20. But existing owners of Santro will continue to get the spare parts and accessories and service support from Hyundai.
Demand of Elite i20 is so high that it is selling well over 9000 units in a month; Hyundai believes that they can take it over 14,000 a month. In 2015 Hyundai is planning to launch some new products so it becomes necessary to stop the production of Santro to make way for them.
Cars like Maruti 800, Zen and Alto 800 have been revolutionary cars in Indian automobile industry but Santro with its Petrol engine; nice gearbox and utmost reliability have transformed this to another level.
Hyundai’s sales and marketing head Rakesh Srivastava thinks numbers can be much better. “We have the potential to go up to around 14,000 cars, and even take on the Swift in the future”.
Some dealers still might have some Santro in their fleet, so they will hope to get a healthy deal for those cars in near future. During its 16 years of existence Santro received many major updates but the major one came in 2003 with new 1.1L Petrol engine replacing 1.0L engine along with a new nomenclature as Santro Xing, the 1.1L four cylinder petrol engine produces 62bhp power. The main USP about Santro is its overall refined performance, affordable price and most importantly its bulletproof reliability.
