aruti Suzuki expects its upcoming model Ritz, based on the Swift platform, to sell about 9,000 units a month. The company’s confidence to sell high volumes of this model stems from the success of Swift, which was its fastest model to cross a sale of 3 lakh units in three years and eight months.

“I cannot tell the exact number. But we hope to do as many units as Swift,” the Maruti Suzuki Managing Director, Mr Shinzo Nakanishi, told journalists.

Mr Nakanishi admitted that there could be cannibalisation between Swift and Ritz, but he explained, “The Ritz will be positioned more as a family car. The Swift is more of a sporty car.” The Ritz, which is known as Splash globally, will be launched in India this month powered by a 1.2 litre engine. It will be launched both in the petrol and diesel variants at the same time.

In its sales forecast for the domestic market, the company hopes to post a better growth than the industry average of 3-5 per cent. “May be the first quarter looks good, seeing April sales,” he said.

Even amid recession in Europe, the company expects A-star exports to increase over one lakh this fiscal. Maruti Suzuki will export about 10,000 units in non-European countries, 60,000 to Europe and 30,000 units for Nissan.

“In spite of crises in Europe, some countries introduced incentives for replacing old cars to new cars. Suzuki is ready to make additional orders in May and June. Nissan is also ordering more,” said Mr Nakanishi.

The A-star is replacing Maruti’s combined exports of Maruti 800, Alto and Estilo for last year. Against an export of 50,000 units for the three models last year, the A-star alone will double the company’s export this fiscal. At the same time, it feels the demand of its other models in the overseas market may not be at last year’s level.

On the marketing front, Maruti is keen to expand its workforce and set up stock yards this year. “Last year we hired up to 1,000 for sales. This year we will add a similar number as our dealer sales executives,” said Mr Nakanishi. Maruti, which has about 2,500 rural dealer sales executives, will also expand its sales force in this segment.

On phasing out M-800 completely, the company said that while with the new emission norms, it will get automatically phased out in 11 cities, it will continue selling it as long as the demand existed in other cities.

“We will continue to sell as long as there is demand. I have told my engineers to try to upgrade it to BS4 norms from BS3. If we fail, we will have to give up,” Mr Nakanishi stated