As they say, what goes around comes around. Once upon a time, Honda cars and discounts were as far apart as chalk is to cheese, but time changes everything. Back then, petrol power ruled in India while diesel cars were largely relegated to the cabbie business. diesel power has fought back with high technology common rail diesel injection and now we have petrol engines facing the brunt of lower economy and higher emissions, not to mention the cost of petrol being significantly higher than diesel, in India at least. And petrol engines cars are being clobbered at the hustings what with even market leader Maruti Suzuki cutting production.
One car maker, really hard hit by the changing times and preferences of the Indian car buyer has been Japanese auto giant Honda, which has an all-petrol line up. This has cost Honda quite a bit in terms of sales and marketshare but the launch of the Brio and the repositioning of the City sedan-Jazz hatchback, has meant that the Japanese brand has managed to somewhat turn things around. That said, the latest hike in petrol prices has meant that Honda is under increased pressure to sell its cars. Lo and behold, we have chunky discounts available even on Honda’s current best seller, the Brio hatchback.
Honda is lining up these discounts as a part of the brand’s 500,000 happy customers campaign, which highlights the number of cars that the Japanese car maker has sold in India over its decade plus existence in the country. The Brio is available for a discount of INR 24,000 while the City sedan can be had with a discount of up to INR 35,000. The Civic gets a massive 85,000 rupees off on its price while the Accord leads the pack when it comes to discounts with a chunky 1.25 lakh rupees off on the flagship model of the brand.
The Jazz though doesn’t seem to get any discount as of yet given that the hatchback still has good demand after the latest price revision late last year. The same goes with th CR-V although we do know that Honda dealers are lining up big discounts on this crossover as well, only that it hasn’t been advertized along with the rest of the pack. It isn’t Honda alone which is jumping onto the discount brigade, a slew of other car makers like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Tata Motors and General Motors are all offering big discounts on petrol cars due to the highly muted demand.
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