Orders for New Maruti Suzuki Alto Top 50,000

Mayank Pareek, chief operating officer for marketing and sales at the Suzuki Motor Corp. unit, said Friday that the company has delivered 32,000 units of the new Alto to customers.

The Alto, which was first introduced in 2000, is India’s best-selling car brand, accounting for one in every eight cars bought in the country. Maruti introduced the upgraded Alto on Oct. 16, but took advance customer orders for the car from the end of September.

The Alto has a 0.8-liter gasoline engine. The company claims the new car is 15% more fuel-efficient than the earlier 0.8-liter version it replaced, running 22.74 kilometers to a liter. Maruti sells another version of the Alto that has a 1.0-liter gasoline engine.

The new Alto competes directly with Hyundai’s Eon, which also has a 0.8-liter gasoline engine. According to the company, the Eon delivers 21.1 kilometers to a liter.

Hyundai Motor India Ltd. sold 97,236 Eon cars in 12 months through October, a company spokesman said.

Maruti, India’s largest car maker by sales, and second-ranked Hyundai were betting on the higher fuel-efficiency of the cars to attract Indian customers, who have of late been drawn more toward diesel vehicles due to a large price gap between the two fuels.