Well, folks, this won't affect most of us in Car Chat (unless you live in that part of the world), but, if you think think the coronavirus sales-slump is bad in the U.S, check out India....a county with some three times the population of the U.S. There, the dealer-lockdowns are so severe that the country, officially, had ZERO sales last month. Of course, that also affects a number of automakers that don't sell in the U.S. And with some of the vehicles normally sold in India, by American standards, of course, it would be stretching it to even call them automobiles in the first place...some of them are little more than four-wheeled motor-scooters with a roof LOL.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a3...s-coronavirus/

India Sold No Cars in April. Zero. None.

The nation has been on lockdown since March 25 and so has the auto industry, which is losing an estimated $306 million a day during the coronavirus pandemic.


BY ROBERTO BALDWIN
MAY 1, 2020
MARUTI SUZUKI

• India’s COVID-19 lockdown has brought automotive sales in that country to a complete standstill with a 100 percent year-over-year drop.
• In April 2019, 247,541 passenger vehicles and 68,680 commercial vehicles were sold in the country.
• The lockdown has been extended to May 17 and will play havoc on an industry that was already suffering dwindling sales.

If you think things are bad for automakers in the United States, automakers serving the population of India would like to have a word with you. The country went on a coronavirus-related lockdown on March 25, which brought a stop to all manufacturing and selling of vehicles. The result is that the country ended April with zero sales of any new cars.
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Ford Agrees to Mahindra Joint Venture in IndiaAccording to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the automotive industry is losing $306 million per day. The automakers include Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, MG Motor, and Toyota Kirloskar. The picture was a bit rosier in April of 2019 when the industry sold 247,541 passenger vehicles, 68,680 commercial vehicles, and 1,684,650 two- and three-wheeled vehicles.

Quartz India reports that vehicle sales in the country were already on a downward path. In March, year-over-year domestic Maruti Suzuki sales dropped 48 percent, while Mahindra & Mahindra sales dropped 90 percent.

The lockdown has been and will further depress an already tough situation for automakers. The industry has written a letter to the Home Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs asking for the automotive sector to be https://auto.economictimes.***************/news/industry/auto-industry-seeks-permission-to-re-commence-operation-of-entire-automotive-value-chain/75494343.

 

Wow! That’s crazy!

 

Thats amazing considering they have a population of 1.2 billion people! Not too surprised though, based on my own anecdotal evidence, which are my coworkers in Bangalore, nobody goes outside.

 

Only about 20 years out of date, Mike!

All but one of the top 10 selling cars in India are modern Asian superminis, many you will recognise.

 

To me, by today's standards, those ARE four-wheel motor-scooters......though I agree with you that the smallest and simplest of them are in the past.

More important, though, than their details, is the physical lack of sales.

 

Their social distancing is more lockdown understandably so to the essentials only.

 

We had a package shipped to our offshore team 2 weeks ago. It got to India and through Customs in 3 days. It has been sitting in a warehouse for the last 10 days because there was no one available to actually deliver the box.