It is quite a dilemma for Toyota, world’s largest car maker. The company’s latest offering Fortuner was received emphatically when it was launched in India. But, the demand was so high that Toyota had to stop its booking to clear the backlog. The company re-opened the bookings in July. Now the booking process is once again stopped within just a month of the company resuming the process, because order backlog crossing 6,000 units.
Toyota’s premium and luxury SUV model Fortuner saw unprecedented response from the Indian customers when it was initially launched last year and has created an impressive backlog for the company since then. Toyota hopes to clear the Fortuner backlog by the end of the year, and consequently resume bookings by January next year. Toyota had earlier expressed a desire to clear all backlogs by end 2010. It has already ramped up the production to over a 1000 vehicles each month. Initially this figure hovered at around 500 vehicles.
Earlier also, Toyota had suspended the booking process from January 31, 2010 due to the backlog of orders. But the bookings were opened again last month. Toyota in India is a joint venture with the Kirloskar Group. TKM, that is, Toyota Kirloskar Motor said that the bookings for the Fortuner were opened again between the 1st and 31st of July, which got the company an additional 3,004 bookings, taking the total number of (remaining) customer orders to over 6,056.
