Scarcely nine months after the Civic Hybrid’s launch, Honda India has decided to discontinue retailing the car in its showrooms. It was only a matter of time, if you ask us, with the company having had to offer all kinds of allurements to customers to clear the car’s stock pile, after realising that its sales would remain dismally low. Your only way to get a Hybrid now is to have it directly imported, which may mean a waiting period of several months before you can lay your hands on one.
The Honda Civic Hybrid seemed to hold a lot of promise when it was launched, amid much fanfare, in June 2008. It did reasonably well too, with 52 units of the car sold in the first month of its launch. After the initial enthusiasm, however, the Hybrid’s prohibitive price tag made sure that the ever-frugal Indian car buyer did not venture anywhere near it. At Rs.21.5 lakh, it came at double the price of its petrol counterpart.
In November 2008, Honda shocked the Indian auto industry by announcing a 40 per cent price cut on the Hybrid. Predictably, within days of the announcement, the company managed to clear the remaining stock of the car, which was, unfortunately, almost the whole of it! The car has now officially exited Honda’s showrooms in the country.