The Hindu Business Line : Tata Motors confident of sustaining growth

Tata Motors, along with the Fiat group, has been keeping pace with the eight per cent growth recorded by the automobile industry in the first four months of the current fiscal but the high growth rate of 20 per cent-plus registered by the industry during 2005-07 ‘may not happen’, according to a senior executive of Tata Motors Ltd.

The company is working on the launch of a refurbished sedan Indigo, which is expected to roll out in the third quarter of this year.

Speaking to newspersons on the sidelines of the opening of the second Tata Motors showroom here, Mr S. Krishnan, Vice President-Commercial (Passenger Cars), Tata Motors, said as a matter of policy he would not like to discuss the targeted annual sales of Tata cars.

Industry growth

The automobile industry had grown at about 8 per cent in the first four months of the current fiscal and Tata Motors, along with Fiat, has been ‘growing at that pace’ and has been seeing that ‘growth about sustaining’.

Asked whether the pick-up in the sale of commercial vehicles showed that the economy was on the mend, he said, “we have seen signs of revival in the market and financing of vehicles, which was an issue in the market place looks that much easier now.”

On whether the company was working on re-doing or phasing out its mid-segment Indigo models, whose sales fell nearly 20 per cent in July compared to July 2008, he said it was nearly six years since the model was launched. The new Indigo sedan would hit the market during October-December and would have the new Fiat powertrain.

Showrooms for Jaguar, Land Rover

On whether Tata Motors planned to open showrooms in the South to sell Jaguar and Land Rover models that were launched in Mumbai recently, he said the company planned to launch them in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi which hold some promise. The response to the introduction of these models in Mumbai was ‘extremely good’ and ‘we are currently booked till the end of October in terms of what we can supply’.