With the launch of the Celerio, Maruti Suzuki hit the sweet spot of offering an automatic transmission at an affordable price. Also, the ‘Auto Gear Shift’ marketing campaign was very successful and reached out to a lot of people resulting in more curiosity about the AMT. Having this success story in mind, the company recently launched the Alto K10 with an AMT version. This is where the problem arises…
None of the two cars are quite a looker, hence, the buyer preference is primarily based on the value proposition; in other words function over form. While the Celerio AMT was the cheapest automatic available in the country sometime back, this title is now owned by the Alto K10.
Price: (ex-showroom Delhi)
- Alto K10 Vxi AMT: Rs. 3.80 lakh
- Celerio Lxi AMT: Rs. 4.14 lakh
- Celerio Vxi AMT: Rs. 4.43 lakh
Both the cars use the same 1.0L petrol motor mated to an AMT automatic transmission. Will people consider that the Alto K10 is an A segment car while the Celerio is a B segment car before buying? Space offered by both is not set apart by a huge margin either.
Maruti claims that while the AMT accounts for 40% of the Celerio sales, the Alto K10 sales will only account for 20% owners buying the AMT. But will this 20% come from those who were previously looking at the Celerio AMT? The sales report for November 2014 will give us a better answer to this.