Hyundai Creta beats Kia Seltos as top selling SUV in June
Hyundai and Kia Motors are locked in a race to the top spot in the SUV segment. While, Kia Seltos SUV has garnered impressive response in a very short span of time, it is Hyundai’s Creta SUV that continues to dominate the segment by a thin margin.
In June, both SUVs saw more than 7,000 units sold despite subdued demands due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Kia Motors sold 7,114 units of Seltos SUVs. That is a big jump from 1,611 units sold in May this year.
With just two products on offer in India, Kia Motors managed to sell 7,275 units in the domestic market in the month of June. Almost all of the credit for the sales would go to Seltos SUV, the company's debut product which was launched in August of 2019.
Also check these Cars
“While the pandemic refuses to subside, the country is somehow trying to sustain and prepare itself to live with the COVID-19 effects. Last few months have been testing for the consumers as well as the industry," Kia Motors India Managing Director and CEO Kookhyun Shim was quoted by PTI as saying.
Kia Seltos has been giving a tough fight to Hyundai’s flagship SUV Creta. But the Korean carmaker’s new facelift Creta has seen its demands soaring despite the ongoing crisis. Recently the company recorded more than 40,000 bookings for the new Hyundai Creta. Launched just days before the country went into lockdown, the numbers are impressive. What is more impressive is its sales figures in June. At 7,207 units, Creta emerged as the top-selling SUV in the country for the second straight month. In May, the carmaker sold 3,212 units of new Creta SUV.
Commenting on the sales performance, Hyundai’s Director (Sales, Marketing & Service)Tarun Garg was quoted by PTI saying, “Our newly launched products like all-new Creta, Spirited New Verna, all new Aura as well as traditionally strong brands like Elite i20, Venue, Santro and Grand i10 Nios have been receiving encouraging customer response."
The diesel variant of the new Creta seems to have garnered more interest than its petrol version, which accounted for only 33 per cent of SUV’s sale so far. The new 1.5-litre diesel engine inside the Creta is the same as the one inside Seltos and is extremely refined. It may be slightly less powerful than the 1.6-litre motor on the car previously but the difference is likely to be quite negligible to first-time buyers of the Creta.
2020 Creta starts at ₹9.99 lakh for the manual 1.5 petrol and goes up to 17.20 lakh for the six-speed auto transmission diesel. The test vehicle in this review costs ₹15.79 lakh (all prices mentioned are ex showroom, Delhi).
