Toyota Corolla, world’s highest selling car, discontinued in India after 17 years

The Toyota Corolla in India has been permanently discontinued. The compact sedan is the world’s highest-selling car.

The Toyota Corolla was one of the first compact sedans to be launched in India this millennium. It was brought to our market in February 2003, when it was in its ninth generation. The tenth-gen model followed in September 2008, with an Altis suffix. The eleventh-gen model also was sold with the Altis suffix, and it was launched in May 2014.

The twelfth generation Toyota Corolla, one of the best looking compact sedans internationally right now, was introduced in November 2018. It was planned to be launched in India in 2020 initially, but the plan was dropped later because the demand was way too low. C-segment sedans don’t sell well in India, because they’re imports and thus too expensive. The growing popularity of C-segment SUVs since the launch of the Jeep Compass in July 2017 has made things even worse.

Toyota wanted to increase the sale of the Toyota Corolla in India by offering a Suzuki-badged version (sold by Maruti Suzuki) alongside the original (presumably the twelfth-gen) model in India. However, with the original car itself being discontinued now, the rebadged one is obviously no longer in the pipeline either.

Last year, the Toyota Glanza was launched in India. Moving forward, the Toyota line-up India will become increasingly dominated by rebadged Suzuki models. The Toyota Yaris doesn’t seem to have a future in our market either. In the long-run, no model below the Toyota Innova Crysta that is actually a Toyota is expected to be included in the line-up.

Also See: New Toyota Fortuner (facelift) - IAB Rendering

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