Luxury car sales zoom in December despite demonetisation

While several car segments including the popular hatchback segment saw a decline in sales in December in the aftermath of demonetisation, the government's move to wipe out 86% currency from the system seems to have had little or no impact on luxury car sales. 

Luxury cars priced under Rs 25 lakh (also known as the D2 segment), saw a over 230% growth in sales in December compared to the same month last year. 

Sales of cars in the D2 segment grew to 2,929 units in December 2016 from just 883 units in December last year, according to data from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). Many carmakers saw the sale of luxury models of this segment their sales grow by two or three times.

In the D2 segment, the Ford sold 912 units of its new Endeavour in December, Skoda Superb's sales grew 300% selling 52 units in the month, up from just 13 units last December and for Chevrolet, it sold 27 units of the Trailblazer up from the 2 units sold in the same month last year. 

Toyota Camry saw its sales jump to 23 units from just 13 units in December 2015. Toyota Fortuner too saw a huge 174% growth in sales as it managed to sell 1,780 units in December this year compared to the 649 units in the same month last year.

There were still certain models in the segment that saw a decline. Honda Cars India saw the sales of its CRV decline 15.4% year-on-year (YoY). Hyundai's Santa Fe's sales contracted by 35.3% and Mahindra Rexton saw it's YoY sales drop to 25%.