Planning to Book a Honda City?Read This First

Honda Cars India has stalled the production of its flagship City sedan to churn out the Mobilio, which has notched up over 10,000 bookings within a week of its launch.

The Mobilio gives Honda a chance to compete in the multi-purposevehicle (MPV) segment, which accounts for roughly 15 per cent of total car sales per month.

Sources in Honda Cars India told NDTV that the City's manufacturing has been shifted from the Greater Noida facility in UP to the Tapukara plant in Rajasthan to facilitate timely delivery of Mobilio.

"The production of City will resume in September 2014," the source said.

Customers who have booked the City sedan are unlikely to get delivery before October-November, dealers say. In fact, a top Honda dealer told NDTV that the City has a 3-4 month waiting period already.

The new City has been a blockbuster for Honda. Since its launch in January 2014, it has averaged over 7,000 units every month and has captured over 50 per cent MARKET share in the domesticsedan segment.

The success of the City and previously the Amaze compact sedan (Honda's first diesel offering in India) has propelled the Japanese major as India's third-largest car maker in July. Honda Cars India reported a 40 per cent year-on-year increase in domestic sales at 15,709 units in July, surpassing Maruti Suzuki's 20 per cent andHyundai's 13 per cent growth. 

Last month, Yoshiyuki Matsumoto (president and CEO of Honda Motor India) had said that Honda Cars India will account for 25 per cent of the Japanese carmaker's Asia Pacific sales target of 1.2 million units by March 2017. To achieve the target, the company is rolling out a number of products and plans to raise the number of dealers in India to 230 by March 2015 from 179 now