Hyundai Motors is postponing the launch of its C-plus segment offering, Elantra, to August 2004. The car, which was slated to ride into the market in May, will not hit the roads till August when the company would have completed its capacity expansion plans.

Hyundai spent $225 million to ramp up its capacity from 140,000 vehicles to 250,000 cars per year. The expansion, which began in October last year, will be completed only by July or August this year.

"We will wait till we are completely prepared before launching the Elantra, so it can happen only after we have completed our capacity expansion. The Getz launch will also have to wait. It will either happen around the same time as Elantra or might even be postponed," said a senior Hyundai executive.

The Elantra, which will compete with the Toyota Corolla, Skoda Octavia and the Chevrolet Optra, is expected to be Hyundai's trump card in the C-plus segment.

Hyundai has been missing out all of the action in one of the fast-growing segments in the automart due to lack of a product is hoping fill in the gap with the Elantra. The Elantra launch is also expected to bring Hyundai the volumes it has been missing out in the luxury-auto market in spite of having a presence in the D-segment market with the Sonata.

The Elantra is expected to cost between Rs 800,000 and Rs 11 lakh (Rs 1.1 million). It will come fitted with a 1.8 litre petrol engine, and diesel variant will follow. The B-segment hatchback, Getz, will fill another gap in Hyundai's product portfolio and help it straddle most product and price categories in the passenger-cars market.