Dealers across the country are tweaking their parking space and enhancing their information systems to handle Tata Motors’ Rs 1-lakh small car(might be named as ‘jeh’). Tata Motors has informed its dealers to expand their showrooms and open more outlets. Dealers have been asked to open three to four new outlets in metros and fewer in non-metros to accommodate the small car. Additional 15-20 outlets for Tata Motors are likely to come up in Mumbai. The dealers have been told that the small car would be trucked out in June after unveiling at the Auto Expo in January 2009.
Tata Motors is planning to begin its sales in a gradual manner to meet production capacity. A dealer from South India says he expects a mad rush for bookings, similar to that for Indica, which saw 250,000 bookings on the day of its launch in 1999. “We have developed space to sell 1,500 cars a month from 300 now,” says a Tata Motors dealer. “We are also investing in our software to accommodate the rush.” The company has still not officially communicated to its dealers the guidelines to sell this car. “We have space to park up to 50 cars in our showroom and 500 in our stock yard,” says another dealer in Mumbai. “We are preparing ourselves as, unlike other models that rake in high margins, this car could be a volume game,” says a dealer in Kerala.