Hyundai Verna: Hyundai India stops making Accent

Hyundai India stops making Accent, to replace it with Verna

It is finally happening in the Indian market! Automakers are finally realizing that they cannot stretch old models for too long. Maruti has been doing it all this time. Maruti 800 is almost a 20-year-old model!

Toyota started the trend when they replaced Qualis with Innova. Maruti just recently stopped making Zen and is reported to be working on a replacement model. And now Hyundai India has announced that they are no longer making their hugely popular model Hyundai Accent!

The company is for now only manufacturing the left hand driven model for the export market. Hyundai has plans to replace this aging model with Hyundai Verna for the Indian market. Verna is expected to be launched in the second half of the current year.

It is interesting considering Accent is still very popular amongst the people considering purchasing a sedan especially the CrDI model. It had an impressive 16.4% market share of the mid-size segment at the end of January ’06.

They would continue to sell Accent for a couple of months as they have enough stock to fulfill the current demand in the market. HMIL’s managing director, HS Lheem said in a statement: “We will launch a newly-designed car, with new powertrains, as the successor for Accent by September this year”.