Tata Nexon pips Ford EcoSport as India’s 2nd best-selling SUV in 2018
07 Jan 2019
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Tata Nexon with its `safest Indian car’ tag has bet rival Ford EcoSport to become the second best selling compact SUV in 2018 while Maruti Suzuki’s Vitara Brezza continued to reamin the top-selling compact SUV of 2018.
Tata Motors sold 52,519 units of Nexon in 2018 compared to 51,973 units of Ford EcoSport sold in Jan-Dec 2018 period in India. The sales difference between both these models are minor as the EcoSport was leading till November but the downward growth is much more than Nexon, as it is one of the consistent models in its segment.
It may be noted that Nexon managed this with just one change got last year when it introduced AMT transmission in July and some limited edition models but Ford introduced a new top-end variant of EcoSport and the company re-introduced the EcoBoost engine in May.
The EcoSport, which started off well with its facelift model towards the end of 2017, however, saw were coming down since June as the compact SUV registered negative growth each month.
Ford also entered into a marketing partnership with Mahindra to improve sales in 2019 and Mahindra has started selling EcoSport from its dealerships in selected places where the Ford doesn’t have dealerships or in the current ones, which perform really bad and these dealerships will service Ford vehicles also.
Tata Motors, meanwhile, is reported to be working on a new petrol hybrid variant of Nexon along with upgrading current diesel engine to meet the upcoming BSVI emission norms. One of the reasons for the success of Nexon is its design theme, which is similar to the concept model and it comes with lots of features and powerful as well as efficient engines. The company also priced the Nexon aggressively against competitors as well.
