Saar: Currently in its third generation, the hot-selling hatch retained a 29 per cent market share over the first seven months of FY 2018-19.

Up until now, only three cars have ever managed to go past the lifetime sales mark of 20 lakh units. They were, in decreasing order, the Alto, Maruti 800 and the WagonR. Now, we have a fourth member of the 20-lakh sales club and it is the Maruti Suzuki Swift. Launched in 2005, it redefined the hatchback segment in India. It introduced the concept of a bigger, more powerful hatchback during the time when India was obsessed with tall-boys such as the WagonR and the Santro.

The Maruti Suzuki Swift is currently in its third generation. It was launched during the 2018 Auto Expo and has been selling like crazy ever since. In June this year, Maruti Suzuki announced that the new Swift surpassed the 1 lakh sales milestone in less than five months. No other car in the history of the Indian automobile industry has achieved that feat so quickly.

The aforementioned news came in just after Maruti Suzuki had announced that in its 34 years and 5 months of existence in India, it has produced over 2 crore passenger vehicle units. In that report, the Swift was at rank five with a total lifetime sale of 19.4 lakh units. It was joined by the Omni at the same figure but is some way behind the other three members of the 20-lakh sales club.

The Swift is one of those Maruti Suzuki products which is plagued by a problem called long waiting periods. In order to reduce that, the company increased the hatchback’s production by 45 per cent to 1.39 lakh units during April-October 2018-19, when compared to the same seven months of the previous fiscal year. From April to October 2018, sales of the Swift grew by 36 per cent which helped it to grasp a 29 per cent market share. In August this year, Maruti Suzuki introduced AMT option in Z+ trims of the Swift. Over 20 per cent of Swift’s sales come from variants equipped with the two-pedal setup.