Indian dealers retailed 427,213 passenger vehicles in September 2026, up 32.10% on 323,391 in September 2025 and up 6.17% on August's 402,398, according to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations, which counts registrations on the government Vahan portal. It is the best month for passenger-vehicle retail FADA has recorded (Autocar Professional, 6 October 2026, corroborated by Rushlane).
Read the 32% with care
FADA itself warns that the year-on-year figure compares against a September 2025 in which buyers held off ahead of the GST 2.0 tax cut. It points to the 6.17% month-on-month gain, and to the fact that this is the strongest September on record, as the cleaner reading. Urban retail grew 32.11% and rural 32.09%, so the lift was not confined to cities.
Mahindra beat Tata by 89 units
Maruti Suzuki retailed 169,132 cars for a 39.59% share. Mahindra took second place with 57,343 units (13.42%), ahead of Tata Motors on 57,254 (13.40%), a gap of just 89 cars. Tata's share is down from 13.76% a year earlier. Hyundai followed with 50,201 (11.75%), Toyota with 28,050 (6.57%) and Kia with 26,663 (6.24%). In August the order was Tata second and Mahindra third, so the two swapped places.
Electric reaches 8.45%, CNG gives some back
Petrol and ethanol took 41.27% of retail and diesel 17.74%. CNG and LPG fell to 23.11% from 25.28% in August, hybrids rose to 9.44% from 9.04%, and battery-electric rose to 8.45% from 7.63%, against 5.74% in September 2025. Alternative fuels together took 41.00%, just under petrol, so the August crossover where they overtook petrol did not hold for a second month, though the gap is 0.27 points.
Nine months and the festive test
India has now retailed 3,815,352 passenger vehicles from January to September 2026 on the FADA monthly basis. FADA counts April to September of its financial year at 2,544,187, up 24.48%. Inventory rose to 43 to 45 days against a 21-day benchmark, with 60% of dealers reporting higher stock ahead of Navratri and Dussehra, so October will show how much of the September surge was pulled-forward demand. SIAM's September dispatch and model rankings are due later this month; the dashboard model table will switch to them when they are published. Open the live India dashboard for the monthly retail series and the fuel mix.