And the winner of the bestselling sports utility vehicle is..

After a gap of two months, Mahindra & Mahindra's 'Bolero' has is back on top of the bestselling sports utility vehicle (SUV) list in India. It replaced Hyundai's newly launched 'Creta' from the spot.

In October, Mahindra sold 7,754 units of Bolero while Hyundai sold 7,225 Cretas, according to figures released by the automobile companies.

Last month, sales of Bolero were 29% higher than in September. Hyundai's Creta, on the other hand, has sold more than 30,000 units since launch.

For the April-September period, the SUV segment in the country had shown de-growth of over 2.5% when compared with the same period a year ago. The damage to the segment could have been more had it not been for the new vehicle launches.

Pravin Shah, president and chief executive of the automotive division of Mahindra, said the growth of 20% was primarily due to new launches as well as the good performance of the company's SUV brands. He said the positive momentum for the industry could continue, especially with a drop in interest rates and fuel prices remaining benign.

Rakesh Srivastava, senior vice-president of sales and marketing at Hyundai Motor India, said the company was hoping to reduce the waiting period for its products with optimum production. He expected the growth momentum to continue in the coming months with improving customer sentiment.

M&M has four products in the list of top-10 selling SUVs —Bolero, Scorpio, XUV500 and the newly launched TUV300.

(Image credits: automotiveml)