General Motors Corp, the world's largest automaker, said on Thursday it will launch two new cars in India next year to help boost its share of a market forecast to be one of the world's fastest growing this decade.
The US automaker -- which makes the German-engineered Opel Astra, Corsa and Swing models in India -- has a tiny 1.6 per cent of the domestic market because it struggles to compete with a host of smaller and cheaper hatchbacks.
But it sees enormous potential in the South Asian country's car market, which it thinks will grow by eight to nine per cent annually this decade.
"We plan to launch additional vehicles in 2003, at least two new cars," Aditya Vij, managing director of General Motors India Pvt Ltd, told a news conference held to launch the Opel Vectra, a premium family sedan.
Vij did not disclose the names of the new models but Indian newspapers have suggested one of them could be the Panther utility vehicle made by its 49 per cent-owned partner, Japan's Isuzu Motors Ltd.
Several foreign car-makers including Ford Motor and South Korea's Daewoo Motor Co drove into the Indian market after the country opened its economy in the early 1990s.
Though a range of cars is available, small hatchbacks dominate the about 580,000-a-year new car market with an 82 percent share. Mid-size sedans make up the rest.
GM, which has a 25,000-units-a-year plant in Gujarat, expects to sell about 9,000 cars in 2002 that will give it nearly a 10 per cent share of the mid-size segment. It sold about 8,000 cars last year.
GM, which entered the Indian market in 1996, did not disclose the price of the new 2.2 litre petrol engine Vectra but said it expected to sell 1,000 to 1,200 of these a year.
The model will compete with other premium sedans such as the Mondeo from Ford, the Sonata from Hyundai, the Accord from Honda, the Octavia from SkodaAuto and DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes Benz C-class.
India's premium sedan segment is only about 20 months old and is estimated at about 5,000 units a year. All models in the segment are priced at over Rs 1.1 million.