For General Motors, when it comes to India, small is beautiful. For, Chevrolet Spark?s success on the country roads has driven the auto major to double its mini-car production in 2008.
The company plans to increase its Spark production to 30,000-35,000 units in 2008 from the current level of 17,000-18,000 units, GM India director and vice-president P Balendran said.
Recently, GM increased its production capacity at Halol plant in Gujarat to 85,000 units from 60,000 units.
?This means around 70% of the increased capacity would be utilised for Spark production,? company sources said.
After adding Spark in its staple in April this year, GM?s sales in India revved up by 58% to 48,367 units till October 2007 compared to 30,686 units in the same period a year ago.
?We are hopeful of increasing the sales to over 61,000 units this year ( Jan-Dec) from around 36,000 units last year,? Balendran said.
Immediately after hitting the road, Spark started running in top gear maintaining an average sales of 2,000 units per month. ?Our sales growth is several times greater than the industry growth that too, when the interest rates are higher and market has been sluggish,? he said.
While doubling Spark?s production, the company is expected to increase imports of engines for the vehicles produced at its Halol plant. Except for Tavera model, GM imports engine from its global facilities for all its other models including Spark.
For Tavera, the company is sourcing engines manufactured at the Hindustan Motors? plant in Indore.
The company has also decided to set up a power train unit in India to manufacture its engine requirements locally so that it can meet its increasing sales and keep rolling out cars at competitive price, officials said.