world’s largest selling car - Maruti Alto

The best selling small car of India, Maruti Alto has beaten all cars in the world to become no. 1 best selling car of the world.

In the race, it has left behind worlds’ top selling compact models like Volkswagen Gold in Germany, Fiat Uno and Volkswagen Gol in Brazil. During calendar year 2010, Maruti Alto sold 3,00, 956 units. Whereas VWGol sold 2,93,738 units and Gold sold only 2,51,078 units. This is the first time when any Indian car model has outsold global best sellers.

Alto, which was launched in September 2000, has been a big success story from day one. It has sold cumulative 16.68 lakh units till now. Since financial year 2005-06, Alto has been the Number One selling car model in India. Alto crossed its first 1 million sales mark in just eight years, November 2008, making it the fastest 1 million units selling car of India.

“Today, Alto along with another sibling called Alto K10 launched in August 2010 sells average 32,000 units a month. In March this year, it sold over 38,000 units. During just concluded fiscal 2010-11, Alto alone has sold around 3.47 units. This is over 1/4th of Maruti Suzuki’s total sales of 12.71 lakh units from all models during the fiscal. It also reflects a growth of 47 per cent in Maruti Alto’s sales compared to 2.35 lakh units sold during fiscal 2009-10” informs Shashank Srivastava, Chief General Manager (Marketing), Maruti Suzuki India Limited.

Some other records of Alto in India are First car to cross the 5 lakh domestic sales figure (in 6 years), The achievement of the next 5 lakh unit sales – in 2 years and 2 months, Crossed the 1 miilion production mark in Feb 2008. First car brand to cross the 2 lakh sales figure (domestic sales) in a single financial year - achievement twice in FY 2006-07 & FY 2007-08, India’s largest selling car (domestic since FY 2005 -06), Fastest to sell 1 lakh cars – in 150 days.

Maruti Alto has won various Awards & Accolades like 2000 : Winner of the “Overdrive most exciting new car of the year”, 2001 : BS Motoring Car of the year 2001, 2002 : Overdrive Car of the year 2002, First Indian car to undergo a 24 hrs endurance test and set 13 national records, Topper of the JD Power IQS in its segment for 2 years i.e 2004 and 2005, 2006 : Winner of the EFFIE award for Boondein campaign and 2007 : Winner of the EFFIE award for the ‘fuel efficiency’ campaign.