The Santa Fe is indeed an acclaimed SUV world-wide, it also gathered a lot of attention when it was launched in India. It gave a straight fight to the Fortuner and other SUVs like the CR-V and the Outlander. The only issue with the Santa Fe is its price, the ex-showroom Mumbai price for the Santa Fe 4*4 is around 24.5 lakhs while on the other hand the Fortuner on road Mumbai price around 24.5 lakhs.
Even if the Santa Fe is more feature packed and ahead of the Fortuner in certain aspects, the buyer thinks twice to add that extra amount. Now one of the reasons why the Santa Fe is priced higher is because its a CBU (Completely Built Unit), Hyundai now plans to get the Santa Fe to India via the CKD (Completely Knocked Down) route. The locally assembled Santa Fe is currently at the ARAI for homologation duties. We are not sure whether Hyundai will pass the benefit of saved duties to the customers or not, but the exercise will surely increase their profitability per sale.
Mr Arvind Saxena, Director, Marketing and Sales at Hyundai India confirmed this news by saying that “Starting CKD operations for the Santa Fe are part of our plan. Typically, we would wait for volumes to touch at least 150 units a month for it to make sense economically. At present, we are doing about 100 units a month.”
New bookings for the Santa Fe will start in June. Hope the new buyers get it at a cheaper price, and if it so happens, our sympathies for the current owners.