Skoda Rapid Registers Least Sales Drop In June, Third Most Popular Sedan In India

As the Indian car sales have been harshly impacted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the production halt, the domestic market witnessed sales of nearly 1,17,000 passenger cars in June 2020, which amounts to a volume decrease of 47.2 per cent on the same period last year. Luckily, the momentum for Skoda seems to be on the brighter side. The Czech company manages to keep the twelfth position right ahead of Nissan and FCA on the sales chart last month with the Rapid being the most-sold model of the range.

The Czech automobile manufacturer reported a total of 790 units sales for the month of June 2020, as against 987 units during the year-ago period. With this, Skoda sees the negative growth of 20 per cent on a YoY basis. However, the company still registered a highly appreciable month-on-month sales growth of 56 per cent when compared to 508 takers in the previous month.

Last month, there were a total of 577 units of the Rapid sold in the country that posts a negative growth of 6 per cent only as against the same period in 2019. This makes the Rapid the third most popular C-segment sedan in the country. With a mere YoY de-growth of 6 per cent, the Skoda Rapid endures the least sales drop in the entire automobile industry. Currently, the Skoda Rapid is competing directly against the Honda City, Maruti Ciaz, Hyundai Verna and Volkswagen Vento in India.

Back to the C-segment sedans, the recently-introduced Hyundai Verna facelift is gaining good traction in recent times while the Honda City is all set to get its generation change this month. Therefore, we expect the segment’s sales numbers to be improved in the coming months.

In another update, the replacement for the Skoda Rapid based on the heavily-localised MQB A0 IN platform is said to hit the Indian space sometime 2022 while the BSVI-compliant Skoda Rapid 1.0 TSI was just introduced some months back.

The model employs a 1.0-litre 3-cylinder petrol engine that is capable of making 110 PS of max power and 175 Nm of peak torque. The engine comes coupled with a 6-speed manual gearbox option. At the starting price of Rs 7.49 Lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi), the BS6 Skoda Rapid is the most affordable C-segment sedan offering in India now.