Japanese car maker Honda plans to make the sedan segment in the India market more exciting with the launch of the diesel version of its premier brand City to take on its nearest competitors.
"This is the first diesel version of City introduced by Honda," senior VP (marketing and sales) of Honda Cars India Jnaneswar Sen said at the launch of fourth generation City here today.
Sen said car would be pitted against models of Volkswagen Vento, Hyundai Verna and Maruti Swift Desire where the diesel variants were available along with petrol versions.
He said that the diesel version of City would help the company in gaining market share.
Sen said that the City model launched 16 years ago had already crossed the sales figure of 4.3 lakh units across the country, adding that Honda was expecting 58 per cent sales to generate from Tier II and Tier III cities.
The company would also increase the dealership strength by 35 per cent by 2015 to penetrate more into the Indian market.
Honda's Rajashthan manufacturing unit would start its assembly line from this quarter, while third shift would start at its Greater Noida plant.
Both the plants were having a capacity of 1.2 lakh units each.
At present, the Honda Amaze model was the largest selling car of the company.
