The Hindu Business Line : GM to drive growth with new launches

The company said, Optra's petrol version that sold 4,000 units in the calendar year 2006, is expected to grow to 8,000 units this year with a target of selling 60-70 per cent diesel variants in the segment.

"At present 20 per cent of the passenger market is in the diesel segment. In the luxury segment, the market would be at 28 per cent and is expected to grow to 45 per cent by 2010. We see consumer preference in this segment," said Mr Ankush Arora, Vice-President, Sales and Marketing, General Motors India.

He said the company had sold 38,800 units last year and was looking to sell about 66,000 units this year, which would translate into a 70 per cent jump in sales.

"We expect the growth to be fuelled this year on the back of new launches and our offering in the diesel segment. We now have a product portfolio in the small car segment to boost up our sales," said Ms Anisha Motwani, Director, Marketing, General Motors India. Mr Arora said that the new features of Optra Diesel would also be launched in the petrol variant in the coming one month.

Features

Priced between Rs 8.74 lakh and Rs 9.99 lakh, Optra Diesel would have a 2.0 litre turbo charged rail direct injection engine, would deliver a peak power of 120.5 ps and peak tourque of 314 Nm. It would be competing against Skoda Octavia (Rs 11.34 lakh) and Toyota Corolla (Rs 9.07 lakh).

General Motors, which launched Spark in April this year, has sold 3,200 units so far and is targeting to sell 18,000 units in the current year. The company has sold 1,400 units of Aveo U-Va model that was launched in the last week of December 2006 and 800 units of Aveo every month ever since it entered the market in March last year.

Mr Arora said that the company was working on introducing a CNG variant for Aveo without giving a definite time frame. Currently, it has CNG version of Optra that is selling 50-60 units on a monthly basis. He also said that the company was planning to launch SUV Captiva next year.