Hyundai in 2-pronged plan to take on City

Hyundai Motor India, the country's second largest car manufacturer has drawn out a two-pronged strategy to counter competition from the newly launched Honda City.

As part of this strategy Hyundai will pit its petrol and diesel versions of its mid-sized car 'Accent' against the Honda City and position it as a more powerful and more fuel efficient car.

Addressing newspersons on the sidelines of a CII conference in the city, Hyundai India, President B V R Subbu, said, "We will follow a two-pronged strategy to take on the Honda City and we will pit the Accent CRDi and the Accent GLS against it. The CRDi will give better performance than a petrol car in terms of in terms of fuel costs and the GLS will be positioned as an out and out performance car which will offer power."

"We hoped to manage the capacity constraint but exports to France, Spain and Italy had exceeded our targets of 25,000 cars and thus we expect the supply constraint to last till April 2004, "he said.

Hyundai, he said was planning to start a third shift at its plant in Chennai from January 2004.

"We are producing close to 14,000 cars a month with two shifts. Adding one more shift will see production go up by about 1000 cars."

Hyundai's two slated new offerings - Hyundai Getz and the Hyundai Elantra - Subbu said would be hitting the market only in the second half of next year.

"We expect to close the current calendar year with a production of 1,40,000 cars. The plans for new expansion capacity of 2,50,000 cars will start by next month and is expected to be completed by August 2004," he added.