51 per cent of Maruti Suzuki Celerio's 14,000 bookings belong to the AMT

Maruti Suzuki launched a new mid-sized family hatchback, the Celerio, at the recently concluded Auto Expo. The company has been averaging 1,000 bookings of the car per day with 14,000 bookings received yet. Out of these 51 per cent of the bookings are of the newly introduced AMT (automated manual transmission) version of the Celerio.

We had reported earlier that the Maruti Celerio AMT is in demand amongst the Indian small car buyers. Maruti Suzuki India's Chairman confirms that the bookings of the AMT variant have exceeded the company's estimations. They were expecting 25-30 per cent of the sales of the Celerio to be achieved from this automated-manual version which have now boosted up to 51 per cent.

The automated manual transmission is currently being imported from Magneto Marelli and Maruti Suzuki plans to localise it by next year. What is special about this gearbox is that drivers can opt for shifting gears automatically or switching to manual shifting whenever they want. This is a feature introduced for the first time in any vehicle from the mid-size segment of cars in India.

The demand for this variant increased due to the pricing of the AMT variants. The AMT costs only Rs 38,000 more than the standard manual transmission which makes a prospective buyer want to spend the extra bit for a technologically advanced feature. The company offers this feature in the base variants as well, not just limiting it to the top-end variants as generally manufacturers do.

Apart from  Maruti Suzuki, other manufacturers like Tata are also planning to introduce this gearbox in their cars. Tata recently announced that an automated manual transmission would feature in the Nano, the upcoming Zest and later carried onto their other cars.

Check out the different variants of the Maruti Suzuki Celerio by clicking here and the on-road pricing by clicking here.

Source: The Financial Express