Hyundai Xcent receives 11,000 bookings in first month

The compact sedan segment has found another serious player in the Hyundai Xcent if the bookings in its first month of launch are anything to go by. Hyundai tells us that they have received 11,000 bookings in its first month itself and over one lakh enquiries at dealerships across the country. 

We learnt a few weeks ago that several Hyundai dealerships received the Xcent for display much later than the launch date. Despite that, the compact sedan has managed to gather good response. That is a positive sign for Hyundai as March sales grew by 3.4 percent for the Korean carmaker to the corresponding period, last year. 

The trend seems to be shifting towards petrols too if the split between the two engine options are any indication. It’s a closer 52/48 split between the petrol and diesel showing higher demand for the tried and tested 1.2-litre petrol kappa mill. A year or so ago, the split used to tilt in favour of diesel cars between 70-80 percent in this class. 

The Xcent is the sedan Version of the Grand i10 hatchback if you’ve just tuned in. It comes with the same petrol and diesel engines and manual and automatic gearboxes. The only change is that the sedan gets a tweaked diesel under it hood that develops 1PS extra power and 20Nm of extra torque. You can read our Hyundai Xcent review here.

Hyundai’s competitors, the Honda Amaze and the Maruti Dzire are unfazed by the new sedan though posting strong sales in March. Although the Dzire’s sales have dipped by about 14 percent, it is still doing around 17,000 units per month and leading the segment by a large margin. Honda too sold 7,374 units of the Amaze in March, which is excellent considering Honda’s reach in the country is much smaller than Maruti and Hyundai. Hyundai then seems to be eating into other segments with the Xcent but these are still early days. We will have to wait a few months to see if the momentum can be sustained.