Toyota launches New Camry luxury sedan in India

Toyota, the world's largest car maker, today launched the New Camry, a variant of its luxury sedan, in India, looking at annual sales of 500 units.

The New Camry will be available in four grades and is priced at between Rs21.26 lakh and Rs23.40 lakh, officials of Toyota's Indian unit, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, told a news conference here.

The launch was seen as Toyota's attempt to revitalise sales of this model. The sales of the existing Camry (the earlier version) went down by more than 75% in the April-June quarter. It sold only 44 units as compared to 182 in the year-ago period, losing market share to rival Skoda Auto in this category.

"Camry is not a volume product," Sandeep Singh, deputy managing director of TKM, said. It is more of a brand and "showcasing of technologies" by Toyota.

TKM managing director Hiroshi Nakagawa said the Toyota Camry has already defined the concept of premium car in India and the New Camry "will offer an exclusive blend of modern styling and luxurious features".

The New Camry sports new design exterior and is available in two colours — dark green mica metallic and beige mica metallic. Its other features include plasmacluster air-conditioner with minus ion generator, intelligent rain-sensing wipers, and moonroof, company officials said.

Singh said TKM's sales declined to 21,000-plus units in the first half (Jan-June 2009) compared to 28,000-plus in the year-ago period, but he added that the company is seeing a "positive trend in the second half" and expects the growth for the whole calendar year to be flat.

He attributed the positive second half outlook to better market sentiment and lower interest rates for vehicle loans and the country's overall GDP growth. TKM produced 54,327 units in 2008.

TKM's focus now is "high volumes". It is moving into tier-II cities aggressively, and the dealer network in the country is planned to be increased to 95, from the current 86, by this yearend and to 150 by next yearend.

The production at TKM's Bidadi plant near Bangalore saw a monthly low of 3,000 in September-October last year before it rose to 4,500 this month. "In August, we are hitting the highest capacity production of 5,000 vehicles," he said.

The company's compact car project for the Indian market is on schedule and it would be launched by next yearend. "We are looking at export market opportunities for this compact car," the deputy managing director said.

TKM plans to produce 70,000 compact cars a year initially with the possibility of ramping up capacity to one lakh units per annum in the second plant being built at a cost of Rs3,200 crore, company officials said.

TKM was profitable from last year, Singh said.