With the coming of all new SUV craze all over the native land, the preference for hatchbacks in premium luxury carmakers' list of the model provision is losing its priority. People prefer to buy standard sedans or newly uprising compact SUVs instead of hatchbacks of BMW, or Merc-Benz per say.
When the idea of hatchbacks was brought to India, its was hoped that it would cater the tastes of young car buyers, owing to its affordability, luxury brand value and feature packed performance. On the contrary, the youth seems prominently inclined towards the SUV market for its trend and all-terrain performance oriented designing. While SUVs gather 40% and sedans make 35% of the share in overall segment sales of luxury car manufacturers, compacts could only manage to sell around half of what SUV makes alone. For instance, Merc-Benz's A class, B class, GLA, and CLA belong to the compact segment and gather only 25% sales while their E-class saloon segment alone makes 35%. Same holds true for not-so-selling BMW Series 1 and not reaching India, Audi A1 as well. Audi finds it useless to invest and bring about their hatches to an SUV preferring market. Rahil Ansari, Audi Head of India said that Indian customers still feel that luxury means sedan/crossover/ SUV in broader terms.
Indians are still accepting compact sedans, the reason being that they are the smaller version of their luxury defining sedans, Audi A3, Merc-Benz E-class for instance. But they do not see fit the investment in hatchbacks of luxury brands because Hatchback for them means a 'middle class thingy'. Alto, Ritz, Swift etc. are all hatches and to look different from the usual crowd, why would they buy a hatch, irrespective of the features of the vehicle!
