Faced with dwindling sales, Tata Motors has announced a four-year or 60,000 kilometre manufacturing warranty on its small car Nano in a bid to woo more customers. Bettering its previous warranty of 18-month or 24,000 km, whichever earlier, announced in March last year, the company said the new offer will come at no extra cost.
"The Tata Nano will now come with a 4-year/60,000 km (whichever is earlier) manufacturer's warranty, at no extra cost. Besides being applicable on new deliveries, the warranty is also being extended to all existing owners of the car," the company said in a statement.
The company said all new Nano customers will have an option to avail a "comprehensive maintenance contract" at Rs 99 per month. From a sale of 9,000 units in July, Nano deliveries fell in every following month and touched a low of 509 units in November.
Sporadic incidents of the small car catching fire has made it difficult for the company to push Nanos sales, despite a number of assurances through various campaign initiatives. Tata Motors earlier this month had asked Nano buyers to bring back their cars to add safety devices free of cost to prevent the vehicles from catching fire but insisted it was not a recall.
Even after registering 85 per cent fall in sales at just 509 units in November this year, Tata Motors claimed that deliveries have "substantially increased in the first five states of open sales".
"Customer satisfaction studies with current Tata Nano owners indicate that over 80 per cent are satisfied or very satisfied with the car, because of it being small yet spacious, its performance, manoeuvrability, durability, mileage and safety," Tata Motors claimed.
In August, the sixth incident of a Nano catching fire since its launch was reported from the National Capital, three months after a company probe declared the car was "absolutely safe".
Five previous such incidents were reported from across the country, including Mumbai, Lucknow, Delhi and near Vadodara in Gujarat. After ramping up production at its Sanand facility, the firm started open bookings at many places such as Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
However, due to rising input costs it raised the Nano prices twice for the off-the-shelf customers. It has so far delivered over 71,000 units.
