Automakers are flooding the market with expensive gas-guzzlers. At a time when fuel prices, the world over, are moving up, it is time for them to go back to the drawing board
Veeresh Malik
Give or take a few million, the drivers of the world guzzle up around 19-20 million barrels of crude oil every day; that figure is, finally, beginning to tell on manufacturers as well as consumers. That prices continue to move up is no big secret and manufacturers, the world over, are scrambling to move to alternate engine technologies. The latest are the venerable lot from Rolls-Royce, whose engines are used not only in their bespoke cars, but also for more mundane applications elsewhere—from simple turbines to complex jet engines. An all-electric Roller will be revealed at the Geneva motor show.
In the midst of all this, we, in India, continue to be blessed with bigger engines in costlier cars. This is interesting, no doubt, but this trend is increasingly seen as politically incorrect, as cars with red beacons on them on Delhi streets are being perceived lately. On one side, the lanes behind luxury car dealerships appear to be increasingly filling up with unsold cars—SUVs (sports utility vehicles) move off the shelves even before they get there, though that’s another story. On the other hand, Mercedes is flooding the market with ‘re-launches’ (whatever that means)—check out their atrociously uninspiring AMGs and the Maybach range of huge buses.
However, truth be told, the new range of luxury cars and SUVs from Jaguar seems to be doing very well, indeed; thank you. At a recent display of super-bikes and super-cars in Delhi recently, they were not just the cynosure of most eyes, but also the most sought after by those who buy. Or at least, those who want to be seen buying which is what much of this whole luxury car game business seems to be headed towards.
The Toyota Etios: Fuelled by media hype
That those in India who also buy are not really falling head over heels for the Toyota Etios is now a simple truth being faced by the fine men of Aichi and Nagoya and their Indian cohorts in Bidadi (an industrial area near Bengaluru).
No amount of media PR-fuelled hype (before and after the launch) can disguise the fact that this car is, despite everything, in appearance much like a poor cousin to the already flagging Mahindra Logan.
As a matter of fact, driving in Delhi one day, I spotted a new Etios in front and subconsciously dismissed it as yet another Logan—till I got closer. I asked the driver of the vehicle at the next traffic light how it felt. He said something to the effect that the ‘pick-up was not suited for city traffic’, as it was tuned for fuel economy to the ultimate.
Fuel economy is good. But, it does not help if a vehicle sports cheap looks, while being frugal on mileage. Somewhere, the guys on the marketing button goofed up, and order cancellations as well as desperate attempts by my bank manager to try to persuade me to take a test drive, and then a loan, make me wonder—where did they go so wrong? It isn’t only about global recalls; it is more about messing around with a decent reputation and trying to fix it when it wasn’t broke. Maybe they were getting bored. Or they didn’t have the faintest clue.
At this juncture, what can Toyota do to salvage its reputation on the Etios? That’s the question being asked in various circles. The automaker should concentrate on making a better car at the same price and cut down on the hype—that is the only way out, one would think, especially when the market seems to be swinging towards economy cars once again. Trying to position something in India as ‘Q’ Class makes no sense. We are a society that simply does not like queues of any sort. Somebody should have told them that.
And the fact remains that Toyota had, and has, enormous brand value in India. All their launches in India, so far, were on unique placement of product (the Qualis comes to mind) and have done reasonably well, given their production levels and aims. The launch of the Etios, on the other hand, was overdone with media hype that probably had exactly the opposite effect—people wondered why a car company which sold on merits had to go out and bang the drums so loudly.
Car interiors: Brand new look
What the Etios has managed is to give a wake-up call to the rest of the lot in the same category. The interiors of the Hyundai Verna and Tata Manza/Indigo, for example, have been redone. They are now in line with cars costing twice as much or more. Maruti, however, is still playing the volume and after-sales as well as resale value game with its DZire, where nothing changes.
For some reason, beige interiors with blue lighting inside seems to be catching the fancy of more than a few manufacturers—a vast change from the standard dull dark grey plastics and white/yellow lights inside. Agreed, interiors are a subjective aspect; but the fact remains—blue lights inside do tend to bring on a soothing influence.
Remember the blue night-lights in trains, or even in hotel rooms—standard fittings until a few years ago? This is often the same kind of blue. Very intense. But it is the quality of the interior noise suppression and cancellation technology which has really evolved for the better, especially over the past few years, and with exponential leaps in the smaller diesel-engine cars.
If you haven’t sat inside a small diesel-engine car in a while, try one soon—and not just for the blue lights but beige interiors, too. So, when do we see the Toyota Etios diesel, then?
(This report was first published in Moneylife magazine, in the edition dated 24 March 2011, that was available on the newsstands on 10 March 2011)
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