FIAT BETS ON SUV, SPORTY CAR

Italian Car Maker FIAT bets big on Indian Market with SUV and SPORTY CARS. It want to adopt GO SPECIALIST AND GO ALONE policy. That's Fiat SpA's new mantra for India, the world's seventh-largest car market. Fiat, one of the first Western carmakers to enter India but now the worst performing. Rather than launch a new model in the cheap, small car segment Fiat plans to tap into fast-growing areas like sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and sporty cars. It will bring its Chrysler Jeep SUV to the country this year and build a small version of the car there by 2015, as well as take aim at the higher end of the market with Abarth, the sports version of its 500 and Punto models. Analysts think it will be a challenge, but could work. "I think Fiat's focus is on launching a couple of niche products and rebuilding the customer experience," said Deepesh Rathore, Managing Director of IHS Automotive India. "It's painful but it's the time to tell the customer that Fiat is different from the image he or she has had in mind."
 Now is not a great time for a relaunch. Car sales in India are set to fall this financial year for the first time in a decade, hurt by high interest rates and slowing economic growth. Yet the potential is there. LMC Automotive expects India's car market, currently around 2.6 million vehicles, to grow to about 6.9 million in 2017. That's around half its forecast for western Europe, although well below its projections of 16.9 million for the United States and 31.5 million for China.

A boxy Fiat sedan, built by Premier Automobiles from 1964 as the Fiat 1100 Delight, is a familiar sight in Mumbai where many still ply roads as Premier Padmini taxis. But more recently, its Punto hatchback and Linea sedan have not caught on. Fiat simply did not get the product offering right, Fiat Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne admitted earlier this month.

 Fixing it means introducing the Jeep Cherokee and Wrangler models this year, to grab a piece of India's booming SUV market, which LMC Automotive sees reaching more than 1 million by 2019 from just 363,000 last year. Fiat also plans in 2015 to begin production in India of a new mini-SUV Jeep currently under development, which will be sold locally and also exported to other markets, Atanasio said. Fiat took control of Chrysler in 2009, and has slowly been adding the U.S. carmaker's brands to its stable worldwide. In all, Fiat-Chrysler plans to launch nine new or refreshed models in India in the coming years, Atanasio said. Recently, India was the only place where Fiat was selling just one brand.
It will not, however, launch a new model in the low-priced small car segment which accounts for around 70 percent of sales in India as middle class families trade in their motorcycles for four-wheeled status symbols. Instead, it will modify the models it does sell in India to suit local conditions, like the Linea sedan, built with a higher ground clearance for India's pot-holed roads. "Fiat will have to get its pricing and marketing strategy right for this model (segment) if its wants to be successful in India," said Ammar Master of LMC Automotive in Bangkok.