Suzuki's new Alto city car 'exceeding expectations'

Right car, right size, right time is how Rob Lake, Suzuki’s GB’s product manager, described their new seventh generation Alto five-door City Car last week at a UK media launch.

Just 3.5-metres in length, built in India and powered by a 1.0-litre 3-cylinder Euro-5 compliant petrol engine, prices range from £6,795 up to £7,960. The Alto will return 64.2mpg in the combined cycle and CO2 emissions are just 103g/km, the lowest for any five-door petrol engined car in the UK claim Suzuki. Road tax is £35 a year.

The range consists of SZ2, SZ3 and SZ4 versions and insurance groups are 1E or 2E depending on the model. A four-speed, conventional torque converter automatic transmission option is available for the highest SZ4 specification version for an additional £600.

The Alto went on sale in the UK last month (March) and already 1,009 have been sold said Lake, “exceeding our expectations and we are well on our way to achieving 6,000 Alto sales this year, around 20% of Suzuki’s predicted total UK new car registrations for 2009.”

The company, well known for its small cars and compact 4x4s, has targeted a total of 28,000 UK sales for 2009. This, despite the current 30% fall in the UK’s overall new car market, is a small increase over the 26,000 Suzuki achieved in 2008. The Swift is Suzuki’s best selling model range accounting for 50% of their sales; the Alto will take 20%, the Splash and SX4 10% each and the Grand Vitara and Jimny a combined 10% share.

The City, Mini or A segment of the UK’s new car market is the only sector so far showing growth this year. In the new registration plate month of March this sector saw an 84% growth in sales over March 2008 but the overall number of vehicles sold relative to other segments is relatively low. City/Mini car sales for March were 7,259 units, a far cry from the 115,022 sales achieved in the ‘Supermini’ sector for the same month.

The City/Mini segment was led for sales in 2008 by previous model Ford Ka with over 25,000 sales. The Peugeot 107 with 16,700 sales was second, Citroen C1 and Toyota Aygo joint third with 15,000 sales each. The new Fiat 500 and highly rated Hyundai i10 are now challenging strongly for sales.

Rob Lake said UK sales in the A-segment show that 63% of registrations are three-door models, 97% are petrol powered, 95% have a manual transmission, 50% of engines are 1.0-litre and 23% 1.3-litre, 73% of customers are retail buyers but Suzuki has a very strong private buyer following with 90% of all their sales being retail.

Suzuki was founded in Japan exactly 100 years ago when the company manufactured looms for the textile industry. Their first motorcycle was launch in 1952, their first car in 1955, their first overseas production facility in Pakistan in 1975, their first factory in India in 1983, a first production facility in Europe was opened in Hungary in 2003 and their latest production facility at the Maruti Suzuki plant in Delhi India opened in 2007 and produces 750,000 vehicles a year, 1 million in 2010.

This plant will also build the new Nissan Pixo, a virtually identical model to the Suzuki Alto. Suzuki currently builds 960,000 cars a year from the two factories in India contributing to their 2.36 million worldwide production total in 2008.

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