Honda jacks up car prices for third time this year

KARACHI: Honda Atlas Cars on Monday jacked up the prices of its vehicles from Rs30,000 to Rs100,000, citing rupee devaluation and expensive steel.

This is the third time the Japanese carmaker has increased prices since the beginning of the year 2018.

The company’s revised price list shows Honda Civic i-VTEC and i-VTEC Oriel will now be sold at Rs2.599 million and Rs2.749 million respectively, an increase of Rs100,000/model.

The prices of City’s manual 1.3 litre and its Prosmatec variant have been raised to Rs1.729 million and Rs1.869 million from previous Rs1.699 million and Rs1.839 million respectively.

Moreover, City’s manual (1.5 litre) model’s price has reached Rs1.789 million, whereas its Prosmatec variant is now available at Rs1.929 million, a hike of Rs 30,000/unit.

City Aspire manual (1.5 litre) is now priced at Rs 1.939 million, while the price of its Aspire Prosmatec variant has been increased to Rs2.079 million, a raise of Rs50000/model.

The company also cranked up the prices of all the three variants of its BRV model by Rs35,000 each. The new prices of BRV i-VTEC (6 MT), BRV i-VTEC, and BRV i-VTEC S are now Rs2.134 million, Rs2.284 million, and Rs2.384 million respectively.

HM Shehzad, chairman All Pakistan Automotive Dealers Association, said the customers were being fleeced by the car companies on this pretext or the other and the

government and other authorities were doing nothing to stop it.

“Beside high price, the consumers are also forced to pay premium in the range of Rs100000 to Rs250,000/unit to speed up the delivery,” Shehzad said.

Last month Indus Motors, the makers/assemblers of Toyota cars, increased the price of their models/variants, for the third time, once again attributing it to the depreciation of currency.

They increased the prices of Corolla XLI and XLI AT were by Rs50,000 each. The XLI is now being sold at Rs1.94 million, while XLI AT at Rs2.02 million.

The prices of Corolla GLI variants were racheted up by Rs100,000. The price of Corolla Altis 1.6 litre increased by Rs100,000, while the prices of Altis 1.8 MT and CVT by Rs150,000.

Prices of Grande MT SR and Grande CVT SR were also given a raise by Rs150,000 and Rs135,000, respectively.