Rush On To Cancel Uno Bookings

The bookings for the Fiat 1000 cc Uno have dropped by 31 per cent.

After cancellation, the booking figure stands at 200,000 from the original figure of 290,662.

Rakesh Mehta, vice-president (marketing), PAL, said, It is mainly the speculative bookings done by the finance companies which have been cancelled. Around 80 per cent of the bookings that now stand cancelled were done by the finance companies.

The cancellations are not high at the individual levels, said Mehta.

Of the original 2,90,662 bookings, nearly 60 per cent were from direct customers.

The company has managed to retain the direct customers who are interested in the car, he said. PAL had collected around Rs 610 crore by way of booking amount.

It may be recalled that Peugeot 309 car launched by PAL-Peugeot had also witnessed around 50 per cent cancellations.

The car, which had managed 1,08,000 bookings, now has around 60,000 customers.

Company officials have denied that the cancellations in Uno bookings had anything to do with the on-going labour trouble at PAL's Kurla plant where the Uno is assembled, and where the management had declared a lockout on June 5, 1996.

At the time of the bookings for Uno, the main factor that went in favour of the car was its price.

An airconditioned Uno, priced at Rs 3,50,000 on road in Mumbai, is still the cheapest car among all the new entrants and is positioned against Maruti's Zen.

According to Mehta, despite the labour trouble, the company has managed to sell around 700 Unos in the country and the target for the year will be maintained.

The company is assembling around four to five Unos every day and intends to complete the set targets.

The PAL-Peugeot plant at Kalyan is also experiencing a lock-out and it is learnt that the workers are firm on not allowing the management to roll out the Peugeot 309s from the plant.