Faced with stiff competition German car maker Volkswagen has still gone ahead and raised the prices of two of its car lines-Vento and Polo - by up to 2.27%.
Volkswagen's increase in prices which comes into effect today is one of the several such raises carried out by companies like Maruti Suzuki, Honda, Renault, General Motors and Toyota Kirloskar recently.
These companies have been attributing the increase to rise in input costs and unfavourable swing of the Indian currency against other currencies resulting in foreign exchange losses.
Volkswagen however has said that the price hikes have been carried out to accommodate more features in the two models. The Polo and Vento will now be sporting 2 DIN music system with bluetooth, USB, Aux in and SD card reader and climatronic air conditioner.
The company had last year done a face-lift of the two models, however, this did not arrest its downward slide in sales. As per the December 2012 SIAM data, sales of the Vento plunged 31.9% in the April-December period to 17,597 units as against 25,842 units.
Similarly sales of the hatchback Polo fell to 25,640 units, a fall of 9.8 per cent during the same period as against 28,427 units sold in the same period a year ago. Total sales of the company fell by 20% during the period to 46,229 units.
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Meanwhile Tata Motors today launched the premium version of the Vista christened D90 priced at Rs 5.99 lakh (Ex-showroom Delhi). The car gets a specially tuned diesel engine which delivers a peak power of 90PS along with a host of features.
The Vista D90 gets touchscreen multimedia system, with in-built voice guided GPS navigation Blue5 Technology, fully automatic climate control, advanced driver information system, steering mounted controls, electric ORVM, rear charging point and intelligent rear wiper.