GM launches new mini car Beat

GM launches new mini car Beat, expects 40% sales surge this year

With the launch of its global mini car, the ‘Chevrolet Beat’, General Motors India sees its total sales crossing 100,000 in 2010 from 70,000 units in 2009.

The 1.2 litre petrol car will be available in three variants — PS, LS and LT. The price will range from Rs 3.25 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) for the PS variant, Rs 3.54 lakh for the LS and Rs 3.94 lakh for the high-end LT variant.

“With its best-in-segment design, performance and safety, the Beat is destined to become an industry benchmark and a winner among consumers in India,” GM India President and Managing Director Karl Slym told reporters at the launch of the car in Delhi.

On how the price was kept so low, Ankush Arora, vice-president (sales, marketing and after sales), said: “This has been achieved by 60 per cent localisation of parts.”

“We will start exporting the car only by December-end and will export 20 per cent of the units produced,” Slym said. The company is looking at Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Slym added that the company would launch the Beat’s diesel version later this year.

Beat is the second car from GM’s 300 series platform, following last year’s the launch of its utility vehicle, Chevrolet Cruze. The company took 27 months to develop it. The car will be launched across 150 countries in the coming months. As of now, Beat has been launched in Korea, Europe and West Asia. It sells 5,000 units a month in Korea.

The US auto major is also working on designing a small car at its Bangalore centre. “We are developing vehicles for India at the Bangalore centre and the focus is more on small cars, as India is a small car market,” said General Motors’ Vice-President (Global Design) Edward T Welburn. The Bangalore design centre, with around 60 engineers, is one of the 10 such centres of General Motors worldwide.

Chevrolet’s new Spark is coming to India!

If you ask around and mention the Matiz to anybody, the word cute is mostly blurted out instantly. The same holds true for its spiritual successor, the current Spark - even though General Motors India now runs the proceedings. And when GM decided to build the successor to the current Spark for the global markets, needless to say it will make it to India, but will co-exist with the Spark as we know it now.



This then is the new Spark. And before you ask how they will run Spark Sr and Spark Jr around at the same time, don’t fret. GM might just call it the Beat in India, since the concept at the 2007 New York Motor Show was called thus. And from what the specifications seem to suggest, it will take on cars like the Hyundai i10 Kappa and Maruti Suzuki’s upcoming Splash, nee Ritz, head on.

The Spark is GM’s global small car that will be sold not only in countries in Asia and Europe, but also become GM’s entry ticket into the growing small car space in North America. And the fact that the Beat concept was chosen from among three after 1.9 million people voted over the Internet means that the Spark is a good looking car. Keeping true to the concept, the Spark retains most of the lines, except that it now gains four doors. If you can’t spot the door handles for the rear doors, don’t worry, it had us stumped too. But as we spotted closer, we realised that the Spark has stolen a design cue from the famous Alfa Romeo 156. The door handles are hidden in the plastic cladding around the C-pillar. Neat indeed. Measuring in at 3640 mm, the Beat is some 75 mm longer than the i10. The new car of course can’t be called cute anymore, as it is rather aggressive and muscular.

On the inside, there are a few design elements that trace it back to the current Spark. Such as the encapsulated speakers on the dashboard or the AC louvers and even the manner in which the central console is designed. What is rather interesting is the way the instrument binnacle has moved from the centre console to the more traditional ‘behind the steering wheel’ position. It looks like it came off a space shuttle, sheathed in silver and a cleverly designed LCD interface. The funky blue centre console dials and the riot of colours make this a fairly lively place to be in. We suspect it will be comfortable too for four adults and their luggage.

Internationally, the Spark will be sold with a variant of the current 1.0-litre four-cylinder petrol that also powers the existing Spark and a new 1.2-litre four-cylinder double overhead petrol that probably traces back its roots to the U-VA mill. No power figures are available just yet, so expect a small bump in power for the 1.0-litre engine from the existing 65 bhp, while the 1.2-litre engine should make about 80-85 bhp. We expect the latter to be the engine of choice so that GM can differentiate between it and the Spark and U-VA. Given how the current Spark is a lightweight city scorcher, the new Spark too should be equally good around town with some ability to cruise on highways.

And cruise it will, but only after GM brings in the Cruze, its Honda Civic/Toyota Corolla competitor, sometime in May-June this year. This will be followed by a new small car before the end of the year, which we guess is nothing but the facelifted U-VA. With Europe being the first recipient of the new Spark in early 2010, we suspect India will be on the launch list of the Beat only by late 2010 or early 2011.

GM to introduce new, fuel-efficienct and bi-fuel cars in India

With the success of its two hatchbacks in the Indian market, General Motors India is set to come out with a third one by the end of the year.

Following the Chevrolet and Spark, the "new Chevrolet Mini will not be a competition to Tata Motors' Nano. We are not in the numbers game. It will be positioned above the Chevrolet U-VA. Pricing will be around that range," said Karl Slym, president and managing director of General Motors India.

Speaking at the launch event of the company's sports utility vehicle (SUV) the Chevrolet Captiva's automatic variant, being at Rs20.3 lakh.

Reports quoted company executives as saying that the Chevrolet Mini would be positioned against Hyundai's recently launched i20.

Initially GM had planned to import the car as a completely knocked down kit into India, though now reports said it would manufacture the vehicle at its Talegaon plant in Maharashtra. The car is expected to hit the market in both petrol and diesel options, and is presently reported to be undergoing the fine tuning process of mapping the product to suit Indian road conditions.

In the premium segment, the Chevrolet Cruz would make its début sometime around the middle of 2009, providing some competition to the likes of Honda's Accord and Toyota's Camry. GM said that a one-week planned shut down at its Halol plant in December 2008 was to allow it to outfit the assembly lines to manufacture the Chevrolet Cruz.

Starting this year, General Motors India will also start offering bi-fuel cars that run on CNG or LPG as well as petrol. In the US, the Captiva has a hydrogen fuel variant. Slym attributed the lack of infrastructure as the reason the company has not introduced thye hydrogen-fuel car here in India.

GM would launch an LPG-powered car sometime during the first half of the year, Slym said, while adding that it would be followed by other LPG vehicles.

GM India already has the its current sedan, the Chevrolet Optra, available in the CNG variant, and the company would look at a similar course of action for its entry level sedan, the Chevrolet Aveo.

Slym said that GM's strategy has been to first come out with "high fuel efficiency in all our vehicles". "Then we will be introducing vehicles powered by (alternative) fuels like CNG and LPG, besides having different power-trains and different displacements," reports quoted him as saying.

GM is reported to have sold around 65,000 units last year in the domestic market, growing by 10 per cent despite the two per cent drop in growth witnessed by the passenger vehicle industry in 2008.

Reports said that GM's domestic market share notched up a few points from 2.9 per cent in 2007 to 3.4 per cent in 2008. the company is planning to make India its hub for power trains for Asia Pacific, after the completion of the $200 million power train facility at Talegaon in 2010.

GM’s future now depends on small cars

GENERAL Motors Corp. is known for making top- notch trucks and sport utility vehicles. The company’s survival now hinges on the difficult task of convincing buyers that its upgraded cars are just as good as its trucks and worth some extra cash. That’s essentially the business plan for the reconstituted GM, the one that is trying to make it in a US market where people no longer want $ 42,000 Chevrolet Tahoes that get only 14 miles per gallon ( 5.95 kilometers per litre) in the city. Instead, the revenue to sustain the nearly century- old industrial giant will have to come from cars, which have typically made only hundreds of dollars in profits.

Better cars, and lots of them. The change has come quickly. Faced with high gas prices and a weak economy, GM's sales fell 16 per cent for the first half of the year, with trucks off 21 percent and cars down nearly 9 per cent. GM has lost billions of dollars during the last three years. The company on Tuesday announced a combination of cuts, borrowing and asset sales that would raise $ 15 billion to weather the recent slump in US auto sales and the rapid shift from trucks to cars. Henderson, who concedes that GM has some repair work to do on its car brand image, says the change will have to come one or two models at a time.

It will follow the path of the new Chevrolet Malibu, which saw sales jump 46 percent in the first half of the year and average sale prices rise $ 4,000 over previous Malibu models due to improved quality. “ One product launch does not a success make,” Henderson said. “ It’s how do you build on that? But I think it gave us some confidence that if we get the car right and we get the promotion right, we can make progress and we can actually bring people back to the car.” GM has big plans for cars and car- based crossover vehicles. Nearly every brand, including Cadillac, will be getting a small car soon. Eighteen of the 19 vehicles GM is launching between now and 2010 are cars or crossovers.

One model, the sleek new Chevrolet Cruze due out in 2010, is the replacement for the clunky Chevrolet Cobalt small car. GM plans to power the Cruze with a 1.4- liter turbocharged four- cylinder engine, allowing it to get around 45 miles per gallon ( 19.13 kilometers per liter). Clark said in a statement, “ GM will likely face a sizable cash burn until it gets this part of the equation right.” GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said car prices also will rise because of demand, while truck and SUV prices will likely fall.