Maruti Suzuki today said it has stopped production of the iconic Maruti 800, bringing to an end the glorious saga of a car which heralded in the era of motorization in the country.
Confirming the development Maruti Suzuki Chairman R C Bhargava said, "We have stopped production of the M800. There were issues related to saleability and acceptability of the product because of safety and emission regulations which are to come in soon." The company completely stopped production of the model on January 18, 2014.
MSIL said though the production of the car has stopped as of last month, as per rules spare parts will be made available for customers for the next 8-10 years. Maruti Suzuki had already discontinued sales of M800 in 13 cities including the four metros in April 2010 as the product did not meet BSIV emission norms.
"It is a dated model and has been selling for a long time. We had already decided we would not invest to upgrade the M800 to meet BSIV emission norms. We, therefore, decided to discontinue the product", Bhargava added. Alto 800 would now be the entry-level model for the company.
Interestingly, even as Maruti Suzuki has discontinued production of the M800, sales of the car have increased by over 21 per cent to 17,000 units between April and December this financial year. M800 sales in the current fiscal year has been significantly higher than newer models like Chevrolet Spark, which has managed sales of only 2448 units in the first nine months of the fiscal.
M800, which launched in December 1983, was originally priced at around Rs 50,000. The car is now available over Rs 2.35 lakh (ex- showroom Delhi). In the first year of production the M800 sold around 850 units in an overall passenger vehicle market of around 40,000 units. Sales of the model grew steadily through the 1980-1990s to a peak of 20,701 units in March 2003. M800 was India's best-selling car till 2004 when it was overtaken by the newly launched Alto 800.
Cumulative sales of M800 since its launch stand at a whopping 2.7 million units – comparable with the size of the entire passenger vehicle industry which stood at 2.68 million units in 2012-13.
The first car to be sold in India was purchased by Harpal Singh, an Indian Airlines employee from New Delhi, who won the ownership rights to the car competing against other prospective owners, through a lucky draw and was handed over the keys of his dream machine by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and cricket legend Sachin tendulkar are among the millions who own a M800 in India.
The original M800 was based on the Suzuki Fronte SS80, but a modernized version using the body of the second generation Alto (SB308) was presented in 1986. Since then the car has seen minor facelifts. A BSIII-compliant version of the car was introduced in 2005 but after that the company categorically stated it would not make any further investments to upgrade the product but would discontinue it upon notification of stricter safety and emission norms..
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