Honda Amaze has turned out to be the most successful venture for the company. Amaze diesel variant has set the market on fire with its record breaking sales. It is giving a tough time to many other sedans out there. But this too has created a problem for Honda India. The car sales are exceeding the monthly car production which is forcing the company to give a waiting period of up to 4 to 5 months to its customers to deliver the car. Hence, now the company has decided to increase the monthly production of the car so that they can reduce the waiting period for its customers.
Amaze, on the lines of its best seller Brio, was actually launched 2 years back in the country but it did not see much of a success here. Honda realized that it has to have diesel powered cars in its line up if it wants to flourish in India. Hence the company launched a diesel variant of Amaze for the Indian market and this turned out to be one of the best decisions taken by Honda. The diesel run Amaze sedan has a 1.5 liter turbo charged i-DTEC engine that is capable of producing a power of 100 PS at 3600 rpm and a maximum torque of 200 Nm at 1750 rpm. As per the ARAI testings, Amaze diesel has a fuel economy of 25.8 km per liter which is by far the best in the country. The car sees EBD and ABS as standard features. The petrol variant on the contrary, has a power output of only 88 PS and torque of 109 Nm. It offers a fuel economy of 18 km per liter. It clearly shows why Honda Amaze diesel variant gained such a momentum.
In the performance report revealed by Honda for June 2013, it was astonishing to see that the company sales had gone up by 248% this year. These figures were largely due to Amaze sedan which is setting sale records. Since April almost 18,000 units of this car have been sold. Regarding this Mr. Jnaneswar Sen, Senior Vice President of Marketing and sales has said that “We are extremely delighted with the consumer response to Amaze, which has surpassed all expectations and is further gaining momentum. We already have more than 18,000 happy Amaze customers and we hope to add many more going forward.”
The company at present is able to produce around 5000 Amaze units every month. The sales are going neck to neck with this and the company sold 4965 units of amaze in the month of June alone. Since its launch in April 2013, Amaze is selling, on an average, 5500 units which is exceeding the monthly production and over the months the company now has a back log of 20,000 units. Therefore a customer has to wait for 4 to 5 months to actually get possession of an Amaze. To bring it down to 2 to 3 months, the company will start a 3rd shift at its Greater Noida plant which might give the company a monthly output of around 7000 units of Amaze. The production at Noida plant will commence in November this year.
Mr. Sen said regarding this “The demand for Amaze has been so strong and we still continue to have more bookings. In order to reduce the waiting period, we have decided to start a third shift at the Greater Noida plant by November.” Although he did not comment on the actual number of cars that will be produced, he simply said that “We have not yet arrived at a number as the third shift will be shorter. At present, we are producing a total of 440 cars per day, including the Amaze, at the plant in two shifts.”
He also confirmed that the production of other cars has not been hampered because of Amaze. All the cars are being manufactured as per their plan.
Amaze is offered at a starting price of Rs 4.99 lacs and the top end variants cost around 7.60 lacs. It is giving a tough competition to Maruti Dzire which has suffered in sales due to Amaze.