General Motors India along with its Chinese partner SAIC is on full swing developing new products for the Indian market across all segments. We have kept you updated about all the developments at GM India and the company’s plans.
GM had announced that it would be developing a Tata Nano rival with the low cost manufacturing expertise of its Chinese partner SAIC. But now reality must have hit GM hard as the company has announced its new car would be priced at around 2 lakh Rupees, which would put in the Alto’s segment.
Karl Slym, President and MD, GM India -
SAIC, our 50% joint venture partner in India, is very advanced on such low-cost manufacturing and we will use its expertise (in developing the 2 lakh rupee car). A lot of money is wasted in duties and logistics if one were to import components from China. Our endeavor is to use low cost supply base in India.
We had speculated about the Chevrolet Sail coming to India and now Karl Slym has confirmed GM India’s plans of bringing the Chevrolet Sail hatchback and sedan to India soon. The company had conducted extensive car “clinics” for the Chevrolet Sail last month in Chennai and a few other cities. Slym stated in these “clinics”, customers showed good response to the Sail variants.
Karl Slym also confirmed that the electric version of the Chevrolet Spark has been abandoned after the company broke ties with Reva as the latter was acquired by Mahindra. He also stated an electric car could be developed in the USA with Indian engineers altering the car to suit Indian markets.
GM’s mass market car for emerging markets – The Chevrolet Agile, has been featured on IAB numerous times, mostly in the form of spyshots. But not many of us got to see the interiors until now.
The car was caught in San Antonio de Areco (Argentina). Despite the reflections in the images, you can see that the Agile is banking on a design code than we see quite often in Chevrolet’s compact segment. Besides the large seat bolsters, the seat is well inclined with projections for under-thigh support.
Also note the circular air-vents, which has become quite common in all small cars. The gear shift position and the high placement of the air conditioning system is similar to the layout in Chevrolet Captiva SUV.
Among other details you might also notice that the steering wheel is three spoked, which is going to be the trend in the new generation models yet to come from GM.
Is General Motors making headlines or what? The (former) American Auto giant filed for bankruptcy hours ago, but clearly stated its Indian operations would remain unharmed.
GM has managed finally to find a home in China for the Hummer brand, which is another huge achievement for the company, since its been like donkey years since the search began.
Would Hummer make any sense in this era of small and fuel efficient vehicles which even the U.S is witnessing? We can’t do any answering now but all we can say is a lot of exciting products could wear the Hummer badge in the future. It all depends on the way the team regroups and works, because its terribly easy to screw it up.
But the hot report of the lot is the Rs.2-lakh car for the Indian market. The new small car would be positioned below the Spark which is currently the cheapest car in India.
Other than India, markets like Russia, China and Latin America would also be on this car’s radar, the report said.
The report also adds a new Chevrolet Spark variant would supplement the existing range. This could either be the 800cc engine or the LPG variant. Guess we have to wait and see.
