This thread has been jointly compiled with GTO. Thanks to him for the expert inputs!
All of us make mistakes; however, some are simply bigger than the others. On this thread, let's share the largest blunders made in the Indian auto industry. Some of these are simply unacceptable; the manufacturers should have known better.
@BHPians, please add to this list in your replies - thank you! Tata Motor's Annual Report uses Mahindra Maxximo images!!
Seriously the blunder of blunders! Someone ought to have been fired over this. The 2010-11 Tata Motors annual report had a sketch of the Mahindra Maxximo on each & every page
. How did this even get approved?
Related thread Skoda's mismanaged dealerships
It is well-known that Skoda's dealerships suck. Issues range from outright fraud, replacing genuine parts with counterfeit ones, dealers shutting down after taking full payments, selling a 'fake' special edition and more. Skoda has not only recruited the wrong dealers, but it has also failed to manage (discipline?) them properly. Sad, because some of their cars are truly top class, but the rogue dealers & reputation keep customers away. After spending almost 2 decades in India, Skoda's monthly sales are a paltry 1,500 units or less:
A related thread (one of many):
1 Overpriced cars
Other than some luxury marques, no one can overprice cars in India. Here, 'value' sells (
not cheap, as is commonly mistaken). Some of the more famous cars that flopped due to overpricing are the Toyota Yaris, Tata Aria, 1st-gen Honda Jazz, the last Ford Fiesta & more. The story of the Fiesta is worth telling. Ford had benchmarked its price against the Honda City. A handful of weeks prior to the Fiesta's launch, Honda slashed the City's prices. Ford, unfortunately, continued with the original pricing strategy & the car bombed upon launch:
Related thread:
1 Nissan outsourcing dealerships to Hover
When Nissan first entered India, they were too l-a-z-y to take the effort & develop their own dealership network. It's hard work, after all. So, they coolly outsourced the same to a 3rd-party - Hover Automotive. Well, that didn't end well. Customer service levels were horrible, dealers were up in arms and once refused to take new cars from the factory (
related link). The marriage made in Nissan's heaven eventually ended in a divorce. This was an incredibly DUMB call by the Japanese:
Related thread Honda cutting too many corners and compromising on build quality
At one time, Honda was the hallmark for quality. They might have been low on features, but the cars were niggle-free and ran almost forever (just ask any owner of the 1st-gen, 2nd-gen or 3rd-gen Citys). In the last 5 years however, Honda's gameplan changed. They cheapened their products to a level that left Honda loyalists shocked! Just take a look at the niggles reported in
this thread. Honda is being penny-wise, pound-foolish and is only focusing on the short-term here. They are losing brand equity. Reuters even had a detailed article on the subject -
link. In our honest opinion, Hyundai has long overtaken Honda in the quality standings:
The Renault Captur fiasco
This was just plain misleading of the customer. Although they look alike, Renault has two different versions of the Captur. One is called the Captur and is based on the modern Clio platform, while the other is called the Kaptur and is based on the old Logan / Duster platform. We get the Kaptur here, but Renault India decided to rebadge it as the Captur. That's still okay, but the real problem was their promotional activity including points from reviews + awards of the more modern Clio-based SUV:
Related thread Ferrari, Porsche, Audi & Ducati partnering with a 'Chor' (thief)
All of the above-mentioned exotic marques fell for Ashish Chordia's glam & charm, awarding him importing rights, dealerships or both. A scammer to the bone, Chordia duped several customers of their money and is now absconding in the USA. Just wondering how neither of these brands kept a close eye on the dealership operations or performed any due diligence:
Related threads:
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4 The Tata Nano's marketing blunder
'Cheap' doesn't sell in India. The 1-lakh car didn't realise it, and neither did Tata (
add Datsun to the list too). GTO has neatly summed up the Nano's failure in 5 points in
this post. A brilliant car with lots of intelligent packaging, but a miserable market failure. Man, this car had potential:
R.I.P. Maruti S-Cross 1.6L
Okay, this one is close to our heart. Maruti
finally launches a car that has solid build quality, European road manners and a big, powerful diesel. BHPians loved it! Then, because of poor sales, Maruti discontinued the car. Come on, Maruti - haven't you heard of the halo effect? Earlier this year, there were reports of Maruti bringing the 1.6L S-Cross again. All we have is hope to cling on to:
Related news Maruti's shaky, unrefined, tractor-like 2-cylinder diesel in a passenger car
GTO clearly didn't like the refinement of the 2-cylinder diesel engine when he first drove the Celerio diesel. It was also under-powered on the highway. This engine is best meant for commercial vehicles only. The noise from the twin-cylinder could actually be compared to that of tractors. The Celerio diesel was sensibly discontinued later as no one bought it. Maruti, we just hope your second attempt at building a diesel engine is better than the first. Until then, it's better you use the 1.3L MJD, as old as it may be:
Related Thread Hyundai never offering sales support to its otherwise nice premium cars
Hyundai has been launching premium cars since the Sonata in 2001. However, it didn't bother supporting them and neither did its dealers care. Guess they missed the memo. Search through Team-BHP and you'll see several reports of test-drive cars of the Sonata, Santa Fe, Terracan etc. not being available. Heck, forget TD cars, most dealers didn't even have one on display!! This was a big problem with the latest Santa Fe which had potential, yet bombed due to a lack of presence in showrooms. Things have improved in the recent past as Hyundai realised "if Mahindra can sell a 15 - 20 lakh product, we can do better", but it's still not as good as it should be:
All the estates / station wagons launched in India
Station wagons won't ever sell in India as we're a very 'image conscious' society. They never have, they never will. Internationally too, the station wagon is dying (
only a handful of places in Europe still buy them). Whoever launched a station wagon in India lost a lot of money on them. From the Maruti Baleno Altura & Octavia Combi to the Opel Corsa Swing & Indigo Marina, they all flopped in the Indian market. The Tata actually had a decent start due to its pricing, but interest quickly tapered off after owners realised that it looked ugly, they didn't really need that extra space & the air-con took longer to cool:
Related thread Fiat's marital issues
Fiat had a lot of potential in India; believe it or not, the Uno still holds the record for the most number of bookings till date! However, the brand has a habit of cutting the branch that it sits on. First, it tied up with the incompetent PAL, which really was their biggest mistake. Then, Fiat had another wedding ceremony with Tata where it (optimistically) imagined Tata showrooms enthusiastically promoting Fiat cars too (Fiat models directly competed with Tata's). The Fiat brand is more or less dead today. Better they only focus on the sexy Jeep:
Related threads:
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2 Ford continuously changing its features & variants list
Where do I even start off on this one? It sure seems like, every morning, Ford India goes "okay, what features or variants are we juggling today?". Ford's constant shuffling around of features has begun to get really annoying. The latest victim is the EcoSport. When the
S variant was launched, Ford removed TPMS and 17-inch rims from the Titanium Plus. This is just one example. The Endeavour has also seen innumerable changes to its variants (
related thread). And let's not forget the furore that was caused when Ford deleted some EcoSport Titanium features within months of its launch:
Using the 'Indica' tag in the Vista
The Vista was a big, big step ahead of the original Indica (
as was the Manza over the Indigo). Tata foolishly called it the 'Indica Vista', instead of just Vista. That automatically drove away private car owners as the 'Indica' had come to being associated with taxis and also had a terrible reputation for reliability. Would the Vista have done well without the Indica name tag? We think so. The layman didn't even think of the Indica Vista as an all-new car. Tata admitted its mistake & eventually dropped the Indica moniker, but it was too late. In the car industry, what you do at the time of the product launch is most important:
Related thread Renault & Nissan's badge engineering gaffes
Renault & Nissan thought that it would be a good idea to re-badge some of their cars and sell them in separate showrooms. Well, no...the customer wasn't in agreement. The Duster sold well, but the Terrano didn't. The Sunny sold in some numbers for a while, but the Scala didn't. The Nissan Micra did too, but Pulse who? No one even remembers it. What's worse, in some cases, there were inexplicable pricing premiums added. This went on to confuse customers and badly hurt sales of the clone cars. At one point, the group had almost 15 cars on sale, but only 2 (or 3?) were actually selling:
Related threads:
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2 Peugeot running away from India, leaving many owners with non-refunded deposits
Back in the 90s, Peugeot left India. It was in such a hurry that it didn't even bother to return the booking deposits that customers had paid PAL-Peugeot for the 309. Now, Peugeot wants to return to our country. We're sure that a line of Indians will be waiting to 'welcome' them at the airport. After all, Indian customers have an elephant's memory, especially of brands that duped them. Peugeot destroyed its image in the world's no.4 car market due to a small amount of $$$ and lots of carelessness. In a bid to buy some 'reputation', Peugeot paid 80 crores for the Ambassador brand name (
related news):
Related thread Chevrolet exiting India
Is this one of the biggest mistakes Chevrolet made? India is a
Top 4 car market in the world, and is only poised to grow due to our low car penetration levels. Position 3? Maybe. New brands like
Kia and
MG realise this and are planning big launches here. We feel that Chevrolet's exit was a short-sighted move just to please Wall Street. All they needed was some relevant products and a competent management to turn things around. Difficult yes, but not impossible. Just see how Tata Motors has remarkably improved its passenger car business that was in the doldrums not so far back:
Related thread 6-month warranty for the EVO X
This one seriously had us
. Imagine spending 50 lakh rupees on a sports sedan, but only getting a measly 6-month warranty? My local pan-chewing audio shop owner gives a longer warranty on his in-house assembled devices. Shows just how out of tune HM-Mitsubishi was with the market. The duds knew absolutely NOTHING about selling cars:
Our Review The ban on diesel engines larger than 2,000cc
This was a completely hare-brained decision. Back in 2015, the SC decided to ban diesel engines larger than 2,000cc in the Delhi-NCR region. The ban was eventually &
sensibly revoked. But such reckless sudden decisions by the government scares the heck out of global car makers who start viewing India as an unstable market:
Related thread