Toyota Fortuner, India's largest selling premium SUV, just crossed a significant milestone with cumulative sales going past 100,000 units this week. With that, the Fortuner becomes the best selling and the most successful premium vehicle ever in the country. No other automobile priced above the ₹2 Million mark in India has achieved the kind of success and seen the kind of volumes the Fortuner has.
The reasons are clear for all to see. The Fortuner offers a combination that’s just too hard to resist – pull of ‘Brand Toyota’ that’s probably bettered only by Maruti-Suzuki amongst the mass market brands, macho styling coupled with amazing road presence in a country that loves SUV styling elements, rock-solid reliability that can dismiss broken terrain with aplomb and trusted yet affordable after-sales service in a cost conscious market like ours. How many other vehicles on sale offer all these on a platter?
When it was launched in 2009, the Fortuner was only available with a 3.0-liter engine under the hood with a full time All Wheel Drive system. Despite the lack of variants and trim levels, Toyota hit the bull’s eye with sales of the Fortuner steadily on the rise. In fact, Toyota sold as many of these as they could make with rivals unable to mount any sort of threat. Barring a few months earlier this year when Ford launched the new Endeavour, the Fortuner has always been the best-seller in its segment. There were months when Fortuner sold more than thrice as much as the cumulative sales of all of its rivals! Believe us, we ain't kidding.
For it’s part, Toyota kept adding more variants and brought in facelifts at regular intervals. While the first-generation model received a noticeable facelift in 2012, the all-new second-generation Fortuner debuted last month. Toyota’s New Global Architecture that underpins the Fortuner has been a cash cow for the Japanese car-maker in India. The Innova Crysta MPV, also built on the same platform, is yet another resounding success story that has decimated rivals on its way to the top of the segment.
Within a few weeks of launch, the new Fortuner has amassed over 6,000 bookings with Toyota delivering as many as 2,000 units last month. Considering the new Fortuner’s price tag that starts at ₹26 Lakhs for the base variant, that’s an incredible start! Mark our words, the next 100,000 isn’t going to take 7 years.
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