Hyundai Motors India is playing a very clever game with its Eon small car. It has told the world that it is targetting a sale of twelve thousand units of the Eon every month. Now that is a paltry sum considering the fact that in good months the i10 sells about fifteen thousand units and in bad months about 10-12 thousand units. Hyundai is going for the jugular of Maruti; it wants a piece of the action that the Alto has made its own. Hyundai wants to take away numbers from the Alto but does not seem to want to say that openly, lest it be seen as a failure a la Tata Nano. What hurt the Nano most was the fact that the fear of roads being clogged with Nanos never came true. Though the Nano is a great car it still has not made even a small dent in the Alto’s fortunes. The Eon will be all modest but then it will do its best to dethrone the Alto and that will not be possible with sales of 12,000 cars per month. Hyundai is cleverly down playing expectations in order to ensure that the car will not look like a failure. Hyundai, unlike Simba, can actually wait to be king.