Eyeing 10% growth in sales this year, General Motors India on Monday forayed into the premium sedan segment with Chevrolet Cruze, priced between Rs 10.99 lakh and Rs 12.45 lakh. The vehicle, which will compete with Honda Civic, Corolla Altis and Skoda Laura, is the first platform of the third-generation vehicles that GM will launch globally.

?Cruze is the first product from our third-generation 300 series of vehicles. All our future products in India will be a part of the new series,? said Karl Slym, president and managing director,

General Motors India.

Slym said the second car from the 300 series would be mini-car Beat, to be launched early next year. Within the next 18 months, the company would launch a compact sedan similar to the Aveo. ?There would be alternate fuelled vehicles, as well as the electric Spark next year,? he said.

The Cruze is driven by 2.0-litre diesel engine, which it shares with sports utility vehicle Captiva, and comes in two variants. This would be followed by a 1.8-litre petrol variant, as well as the automatic variant of the diesel Cruze next year. The Chevy Cruze is based on the JS 300 platform designed in Korea in association with General Motors Daewoo Automotive and Technology and the first offering from this platform in India.

?The company, which wants to be a market leader in the segment with Optra and Cruze, is initially eyeing 800-1,000 units of Cruze a month, to be later stabilised at around 500-600 units of Cruze alone. Sales of Optra are also expected to go up beyond 250-300 units a month,? said Ankush Arora, vice-president (sales and marketing), adding that the company has already received 1,200 bookings for Cruze on the first day of its launch. Arora said the premium sedan segment has grown by 12% in the last four months and is currently pegged at 3,500 to 4,000 units a month.

Sales of General Motors India went up by 49% in September at 7,654 units, its highest-ever monthly sales. The company expects to continue the growth momentum during the festival season with the Cruze. ?We expect to once again register a growth of 10% this year, similar to that of 2008,? Slym added.