Motown on fire, car prices set to rise

New Delhi: Motown is not promising a Happy New Year to Indians.

People planning to buy a new car in the New Year may be up for a shock as carmakers across the board are planning to hike car prices in the very first week of 2007.

After Maruti Udyog announced a relook at its products in late-December-January due to cost pressures, obviously hinting at an imminent price hike, Country's second largest carmaker Hyundai Motor on Tuesday said it will raise car prices by 2-3 per cent. This will affect even Hyundai's popular hatchback Santro.

A 2-3 per cent hike could mean a price rise up to Rs 14,000 on specific models. Similarly at Maruti, the prices will be up by Rs 10,000-12 ,000 for the fast-selling models.

"We will be revising prices across our model range by 2 to 3 per cent in the next fortnight," the Vice-President (Marketing) of Hyundai Motor, Arvind Saxena, said.

For Santro, however, it will work out to around Rs 6,000 to Rs 9,000. For Verna, the price hike will be about Rs 12,000-18,000 whereas prices will be up by Rs 14,000-18,000 on Elantra.

If the market buzz is to be believed, even GM India is planning to hike prices on its popular models like Optra, Aveo and Travera. GM is, however, likely to keep the increase slightly low at 1-2 per cent. Yet, this boils down to a price hike of Rs 8,000-15,000 on Optra, Rs 8,000-20,000 on Aveo and Rs 7,000-20,000 on Tavera.

Skoda has already announced a hike of Rs 15,000 on the Octavia, Laura, Superb and the Combi.