Tata Motors eyes 15% passenger car growth

Tata Motors Ltd is looking at a 13-15 per cent growth in its domestic passenger car business in the current fiscal.

Rajiv Dubey, vice president - commercial, passenger car business, said, "The growth in the first four months was over 40 per cent when compared with the same period last financial year. We expect to close the current fiscal with an average growth of 13 per cent to 15 per cent. In the first four months of the current year, we sold close to 42,300 vehicles."

Dubey said Tata Indigo, since its introduction in December last year, has remained the largest selling car in the C segment, adding that Indica, Indigo and Sumo were among the top ten models sold in the country.

Tata Motors is also looking at launching a petrol version of the Tata Safari with a 135 bhp 16-valve engine within the next two months.

The diesel version currently available has a 90 bhp engine. The company is, however, yet to decide on the price of the petrol variant.

Company officials also said shipments of Tata Indica to MG Rover in the UK will start by the last quarter of the calendar year. The car, to be called City Rover, will be sold in England and Ireland.

Dubey said the company expects to ship around 100,000 vehicles to Rover MG over the next five years but was unable to specify the size of the first shipment.

The officials from Tata Motors were in Chennai to inaugurate a three-day Tata Indica Carnival for providing free check-up and test drives of Tata Motors' latest passenger cars.

Dubey said the company expects around 1,000 customers to show up for the free check. The company had recently completed a similar fest at Hyderabad where around 500 Tata customers had turned up for the free check-up. The company plans to hold similar carnivals at Cochin and Bangalore.