It lasted all of seven days, and had the entire auto industry talking about it while it did. We are referring here to the massive price cut announced by Honda on the Civic hybrid last week. Honda slashed the Civic hybrid’s price by an unprecedented 37 per cent, bringing it down from Rs. 21.5 lakh to Rs. 13.36 lakh. After the price cut, the car sold 235 units in four days, almost four times the sales figure for the preceding five months!
The Civic hybrid, when it was introduced in June, had generated a tremendous amount of interest, and even sold a decent 52 units in the first month of its launch. Thereon, however, the sales graph went straight downwards, with only 10 bookings made for the car in the following months. Given the hybrid’s daunting price tag, its dismal performance wasn’t so surprising. At Rs. 21.5 lakh, its price was almost double that of the petrol version – the reason for that being the exorbitant import duty levied on the hybrid.
The price cut, then, made complete sense for the company. A lot of industry experts and competitors say this was an inventory-cleaning exercise by Honda, something Honda’s representatives have vehemently refuted. The company says it closed the offer after just a week because the ‘target’ it had set for itself had been achieved.
Meanwhile, early buyers of the car are feeling rather cheated for the loss they now think they’ve incurred. Last we heard, Honda itself was chewing on the idea of compensating these early loyalists in some way, though the company was quick to point out that this wasn’t a liability.