Continuing to defy the global slump, car sales of the leading automakers, including Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, Honda-Siel, Tata Motors and Fiat, went up to 152,409 units in March this year, from 146,338 units in March 2008.

India's top car maker Maruti Suzuki posted a third straight month of higher sales in March, helped by a jump in exports of its compact A-Star and strong rural demand. Maruti, in which Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp has a 54.2-per cent stake, said last week that total sales in March rose 22 per cent from a year earlier to 85,669 units, with exports more than doubling to 11,814.

Sales had jumped nearly a quarter in February and rose 5.4 per cent in January from a year earlier after the government slashed factory taxes and the central bank cut interest rates to revive consumer spending. This helped lift Maruti's sales by 3.6 percent for the financial year ended March to 792,167 units.

Exports in 2008-09 rose 32 per cent, the company said, led by 19,000 units of A-Star launched last November.

It also claimed that its popular hatchback Alto recorded-highest ever sales in March at 23,569 units, representing a jump of 20.98 per cent during the month over the corresponding period last year.

"So far only two cars in the history of Indian automobile industry have crossed the 20,000 units mark in single month- once by M800 and 11 times by Alto," a company official said.

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) was the second company to post strong sales for March this year, based on the roaring success of its newly launched utility vehicle, Xylo, which has a waiting period of around six to eight weeks. The firm sold a record 19,973 units of utility vehicles in March, 30 per cent more than the previous year.

Fiat India, on the back of the launch of new models, saw its sales go up nearly three-fold, from 450 in March 2008 to 1,817 in March this year.

On the other hand, GM India, an arm of the near-bankrupt US giant General Motors Inc, managed to sell 5,001 units, which was down by 26 per cent from the 6,836 units sold in March 2008. Company officials said this was due to the market conditions in India, adding that the figures would improve in the coming months. GM, however, has managed to register a 1.5 per cent increase in March compared to the previous month.

Ford Motor Co, the other US major in India, is yet to declare its March figures.

Honda Siel Cars India, part of the Japanese Honda group, also reported a decline of 17.16 per cent in its sales in March, at 7,368 units compared with 8,895 units in the same month last year. The sale figures comprise 6,040 units of its flagship sedan, City, 720 units of premium sedan Civic, 326 units of luxury sedan Accord and 282 units of the SUV CR-V, the company said.

"Even in these challenging times, the sales of Honda City have grown by 20 per cent ever since the deliveries started in November 2008. We enter 2009-10 with a lot of confidence and are looking forward to launch of Honda Jazz as the year progresses," HSCI Vice-President (Marketing) Jnaneswar Sen said in a statement.

The cumulative sales of HSCI during the fiscal 2008-09 dipped 16.53 per cent at 52,420 units against 62,802 units sold in April 2007-March 2008.

The Indian unit of South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co said last week its March car sales in India fell 15.8 per cent from year earlier, as a slowing economy hit consumer spending. It sold 24,754 cars in India during the month, down from 29,401 sold last year.

While Hyundai's domestic sales dipped by 15 per cent to 24,754 units in March, its exports rose by 22 per cent, to 21,406 units. "The industry is far from seeing a turnaround at this moment," Arvind Saxena, senior vice president for marketing and sales at Hyundai Motor India Ltd, said in a statement.

Though March domestic sales were higher by nearly 17 per cent from February, the combined sales of February and March this year rose only 4.5 per cent from year ago, he said.

The same trend of falling sales was witnessed by Tata Motors. Despite good sales for Indica Vista and the improved Indigo and Sumo Grande, its March sales dipped by 4 per cent to 23,680 units.