2014 Honda Fit (Jazz) Grabs Whooping 62,000 Bookings in 1 Month!

The 2014 Honda Jazz is known as the Fit in Japan and some other countries. It went on sale on the 5th of last month, and Honda Japan has received a mind-boggling 62,000 ( approx. ) bookings till now.

That’s nearly 2000 bookings per day!!

Honda Japan is overwhelmed by the response that the new Jazz ( Fit ) has garnered, since they had expected it to sell around 15,000 units per month. A four-fold increase is a windfall for Honda, and very big at that. Quite obviously, Honda wasn’t able to deliver all the bookings.

Since the expected demand was nearly 15,000 units per month, the ramped-up production capacity was able to cater to only 19,388 buyers. The rest are in the process of getting their vehicles in the coming days, as Honda considers options to further swell its production capacity.

Even after selling 19,388 units last month, the Jazz ( Fit ) was the third largest selling car in Japan. The Toyota Aqua and the Prius were ahead with handsome leads. The Aqua and the Prius sold 26,543 units and 23,069 units respectively. However, Honda has been surprised by the fact that about 57% of the Jazz’s customers were ones who ditched a car from a rival automaker to own the new car.

Generally, the so-called conversion rate hovers between 30% and 40%. A rate of 57% shows that the new Jazz has been able to catch the imagination of the masses. Data also shows that nearly 70% of the sales are coming in from the hybrid model of the Jazz, whereas the rest 30% are clocked by the petrol model. We feel this particular situation has arised because of Honda’s earlier claims that the Hybrid Jazz will return efficiency figures of nearly 36 km/litre, according to Japanese driving cycle tests.

This does show quite a bit about people’s preferences in these times, and makes a good pitch for the Indian Government to pull down its policy of high duties and levies against Hybrid models like the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic.

The Jazz will be launched in India in early 2014. In fact, it has not made its way to the European and American markets. Indian market has seen some sort of polarization towards diesel engines, and hence Honda has stated that a diesel engine option will be available in the new Jazz. Other options include a 1.3-liter i-VTEC and a 1.5-liter i-VTEC as well as the 1.5-liter hybrid variant. In India, apart from the 1.5L diesel, it will be the 1.2L i-VTEC that Jazz will get. We don’t expect the Hybrid variant to make the cut to India.

Source – Indian Autos Blog