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Telco to launch 'Indigo' sedan by end-Oct

India's top truck maker, Tata Engineering & Locomotive Co Ltd, said on Tuesday it was set to roll out a sedan version of its lone car model, the successful Indica hatchback, by the end of October.

The Indigo sedan will mark Telco's entry into the mid-size segment, which accounts for 17 per cent of the industry's sales by volume, and will be the first of four new models the company will launch over the next six months to boost market share.

"I expect it to stir up the segment in the same fashion that the Indica did when it was launched," Rajiv Dube, vice-president of Telco's car unit, told a news conference.

Telco is part of India's second-largest conglomerate by sales, the Tata group.

Its Indica had evoked a huge initial consumer response when it was launched in 1999, partly due to its attractive price, which forced market leader Maruti Udyog, a unit of Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp, to lower prices.

It is India's first homegrown car, developed entirely by Telco and has a 23-per cent market share in the segment where it competes with models made by the local units of Suzuki, Hyundai and Fiat.

The new Indigo sedan, which will be introduced in diesel and petrol variants and carry a more powerful version of Indica's 1.4-litre engine, will be pitted against Hyundai's Accent, Ford's Ikon, Maruti's Esteem and General Motor's Opel Corsa.

Dube said the company aimed to sell 1,000 Indigos a month.

Its launch will be followed by the launches of a top-end version of Telco's Safari sports utility vehicle, a sports model of the Indica hatchback in December-January and a station-wagon version of the Indigo before the end of March 2003.

Company officials said the top-end Safari sports utility vehicle will sport a new 135-horsepower two-litre petrol engine, which is more powerful than the existing diesel engine.

Personal utility vehicles

The company also launched on Tuesday two variants of the Sumo utility vehicle, the Sumo plus and Sumo Ex plus, which purport to offer improved ride, handling and passenger comfort.

They are aimed at the personal segment of the utility vehicle market, which accounts for 40 per cent of all utility vehicle sales.

The new Sumo models are expected to take on Mahindra and Mahindra's Scorpio model, which has received a good response from consumers since its launch in June, and a new luxury version of Toyota's Qualis that was introduced last month.

India's utility models, which cost Rs 450,000 to Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) are designed mainly as large, rugged and powerful vehicles capable of carrying more than six people.

Utility vehicle sales in India, at 120,000 units a year now, are poised to grow as the country follows a global trend of consumers increasingly buying multi-purpose personal vehicles.

They now make up just 11 per cent of all passenger vehicles sales, compared with about 30 per cent each in the United States and Japan.

Dube expected India's passenger vehicle market, which had sales of 689,830 units in the past year to March, to grow by five to seven per cent this year, more than making up for an over one-per cent drop in April-August.

He said Telco had sold 46,608 cars and utility vehicles combined in the domestic market in the first half of the year to September and was on track to meet its annual target of 100,000 units, up from about 89,000 last year.

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