Maruti rolls out 1,00,000th A-Star

The country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India has achieved the feat of rolling out the 1,00,000th of its flagship export model, A-Star.

The Manesar facility of the company, which manufactures A-Star, SX4, Swift and Swift DZiRE, has also crossed the 5-lakh-units production mark since the commencement of the unit.

These landmarks come less than two weeks after the company achieved the milestone of producing 80 lakh units of the car since 1983.

"A-Star is doing very well in the export market. We are planning to export over 75,000 units of the car by the end of this fiscal," Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava said.

He said Japanese car giant Nissan has increased the order of the small car to 54,000 units for this fiscal from 30,000 units. Nissan sells the car in the European market under the brand Pixo.

"At one stage Nissan was very hesitant to place order and they had reduced it from 50,000 units, which they were discussing with us. Now the total A-Star export will cross 1.3 lakh units in 2009-10," Bhargava said.

The company has already exported over 50,000 units of A-Star to over 44 countries including Netherlands, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Angola, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Morocco, Libya, New Zealand and some Latin American nations. The production of the model started in October, 2008.