Mercedes-Benz India continued its spree of launches in 2014 with their eighth product launch of the year with the compact Sports-Utility Vehicle (SUV) the GlA. The GlA which is an all-new model based on Mercedes' front-wheel drive platform will be available at dealerships from Wednesday, although as Eberhard Kern, Managing Director, Mercedes-Benz India pointed out, 600 cars have already been booked prior to the launch.
The GlA which will take on the BMW X1, Audi Q3 and the land Rover Freelander 2 is being priced at Rs 32.75 lakh for the base 'Style' specification and up to Rs 36.9 lakh for the 'Sport' specification. The car will be available with two engine options, one petrol and one diesel.
In an interaction with The Pioneer later, Kern said that 2014 has been a record year for Mercedes-Benz India, having sold 4717 cars between January and June, a number that does not include sales of several models launched in the past few months. The carmaker is in fact finding it difficult to manage demand, for example, it has sold out the 2014 stock for its luxury sedan the S-Class as well as the Gl Sports Utility Vehicle. "Managing demand has been a challenge", Kern admitted and he hoped that the long waiting periods while a good indicator of demand did not irritate customers, "although it is good to know that most customers would wait for a Mercedes than go to our rivals."
This November will mark Mercedes-Benz' twentieth anniversary in India as a company, and Kern said that there are now 61,000 cars that the carmaker has sold in India in that time-period. "We are expanding our assembly facilities at our plant in Chakan to 20,000 vehicles per annum and will be the biggest luxury-car assembly plant in India and next year we shall start assembly of the ClA small sedan", he said. However, while he lauded Prime Minister narendra Modi's 'Make In India' program he said that demand in India needs to grow significantly for local manufacturing to commence.
Mercedes-Benz India is not yet done with product launches for 2014, with two more launches, the first the GlA 45 AMG, performance variant of the GlA and a tenth model that will be announced shortly.