CHENNAI: In November 2025, retail sales of passenger vehicles rebounded strongly — and inventory levels at dealerships fell to about 44–46 days. According to FADA, this reflected robust demand even after the festival season, helped by the continued positive effects of recent tax cuts and improved availability of high-demand models. Dealers said that enquiries remained strong thanks to a lively wedding season and year-end buying sentiment, and that stock was being cleared faster than expected.
FADA’s leadership — including its president — has highlighted the transformation. Reflecting on October’s record highs, the president C S Vigneshwar observed that reforms and festive demand, aided by rural revival, spurred “renewed consumer confidence and strong economic undercurrents.” For November, dealers expressed optimism that the momentum would carry into December, underpinned by harvest-linked liquidity, wedding-season demand and new model launches.
FADA President added that inventory levels dropped sharply to about 44–46 days from the earlier 53–55 days, reflecting a much healthier balance between demand and supply. This improvement supported a strong retail performance, with passenger vehicle sales rising to 394,152 units in November compared with 329,253 units a year ago.
He noted that, in addition to the benefits from recent GST reductions, the surge was driven by the marriage season, improved availability of high-waiting-period models, and continued momentum in the compact SUV segment.
In contrast, two-wheeler retail slipped by 3 per cent in November, while construction-equipment sales fell 17 per cent. Other categories, however, posted solid growth: commercial vehicles were up 20 per cent, three-wheelers rose 24 per cent, and tractor sales jumped 57 per cent. Despite November traditionally being a quieter period after the festive peak, these gains lifted overall vehicle retail by 2 per cent to around 3.3 million units compared with the same month last year.
Looking back over the preceding months: the retail auto market had already seen a major surge. In September, PV sales rose about 5.8 per cent year-on-year — modest for the full month — but sales jumped sharply during the nine-day festival window (Navratri 2025), when PVs sold nearly 35 per cent more than in the previous year. That surge was attributed to newly lowered GST rates, which made both cars and two-wheelers more affordable.
October then went on to become a historic high: overall auto retail was up around 40.5 per cent compared with the same month last year. In that month, PV sales crossed 5.57 lakh units — the highest ever recorded by dealerships for a single month. FADA said that the combination of tax reforms, festive demand and a resurgence in rural purchasing power (“Bharat driving auto retail growth”) were responsible. Inventory levels for PVs had already started improving, falling to about 53–55 days in October, signalling better alignment between supply and demand.
Thus, by the time November came around, the market was already on a strong footing — but the fact that sales held up and inventory compressed further suggests that demand is not just a temporary festive-season surge, but potentially a more sustained upturn.