Booking a car? Wait could stretch to a year

The wait to own a car just got longer. Buoyed by a robust economic growth and rising demand for cars, manufacturers keep people waiting for months to lay their hands on the vehicle.

Another reason for the delay is that the manufacturers are crunched for capacity.

At present, the waiting period for Toyota Etios, the newest model on the block, is 8-10 months. Some dealers predict it could stretch to a year. Despite the waiting period, there is a huge demand for the car — there have been over 7,000 bookings within a week of its launch.

Massive pre-bookings for Toyota’s Fortuner forced the company to suspend bookings in May. The average waiting period for the SUV, launched in 2009, is six months. The company said it would resume bookings only when the waiting period comes down to three months.   

The scene is no different in case of cars manufactured by market leader Maruti Suzuki and new entrants like Volkswagen. For Maruti Suzuki cars, the average waiting period is 3-4 weeks, although those interested in buying the Eeco have to wait for almost six months. Swift and Dzire have waiting periods of four months each. According to a company spokesperson, there are waiting periods on 20% Maruti vehicles.

Two-wheelers are not exempt either. Since demand exceeds supply, they too are available after a substantial time gap. “All Honda scooters are on waiting periods. Activa, especially, has a waiting period of 8-10 months,” said a Mumbai-based dealer. “We expect the waiting period to come down with the company’s new plant,” a Honda dealer told DNA.

Several automakers hope to reduce the waiting period by pumping in more money to increase capacity at their manufacturing units. “We are not happy that our customers have to wait for our cars. We are trying to enhance the capacity before the desired date,” a Maruti Suzuki spokesperson said. Maruti Suzuki, which manufactures 10 lakh units annually, is in the process of increasing the number to 12 lakh by 2012. The company is investing Rs1,925 crore for setting up its third plant at Manesar, Haryana.

Toyota has started its second plant near Bangalore to produce 70,000 Etios. German carmaker Volkswagen is also ramping up production of its Polo and Vento models to cover a waiting period of 3-4 months. The Polo was launched in India in March and has sold over 17,000 units as of end-November. “We have started a second shift at our Chakan plant to scale up production to meet the demand for Polo and Vento,” said Neeraj Garg, director, Volkswagen group sales India, (passenger cars).

Naresh Kumar Rattan, operating head, sales and marketing, general manager, Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India, told DNA: “We have fully utilised the capacity of our existing plant in Manesar. It was necessary for us to look for options that would help ramp up our existing capacity.” The company’s existing capacity is 16 lakh units per annum. The capacity of the new plant will be six lakh units, scaleable to 12 lakh units per annum.

Bajaj Auto, which is riding high on the sales of Pulsar and Discover bikes, is also making efforts to bring down the waiting periods on its models.