Sales of cars shift gear, bikes skid

India's domestic passenger car sales grew 8.9 per cent on year in December to 88,220 units, the automobile manufacturers' body said today.

December car sales were 14.4 per cent lower than 103,031 sold a month ago.

Domestic passenger car sales in April-December, the first nine months of 2007-08, grew 13.3 per cent to 866,750 units, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam) said.

Domestic commercial vehicle sales in December rose 1.4 per cent from a year ago to 42,508 units, the association said. Local two-wheeler sales continued to decline. 
 

BUMPY RIDE Segment-wise performance of automobile industry
In numbers	November 2007	December		Y-o-Y % chng
		2006	2007
Commercial vehicles of which	40,466	41,907	42,508	1.4
Medium and heavy vehicles	22,061	24,862	23,544	-5.3
Light vehicles	18,405	17,045	18,964	11.2
Passenger cars	1,03,031	81,033	88,220	8.9
Multi-purpose vehicles	8,204	6,523	9,093	39
Utility vehicles	19,692	18,099	17,787	-1.7
Two-wheelers of which	6,65,181	5,94,599	5,45,484	-8.3
Scooters/scooterettes	89,078	70,563	77,494	9.8
Motorcycles/step-through	5,40,553	4,92,288	4,35,924	-11.4
Mopeds	33,557	29,396	30,886	5
Electric 2-wheelers	1,993	2,352	1,180	-49.8
Three-wheelers	30,124	31,811	26,823	-15.6
Total	8,66,698	7,73,972	7,29,915	-5.7
Exports	90,444	88,678	1,03,944	17.2

Two-wheeler sales in December fell 8.3 per cent year-on-year to 545,484 units.Motorcycle sales for the month were down 11.4 per cent year-on-year at 435,924 units.