GM India managing director Karl Slym in New Delhi on Tuesday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, Oct. 23: General Motors plans to launch its sports utility vehicle, the Chevrolet Captiva, at the auto expo here in January.

The company also aims to set up its first powertrain and engine manufacturing facility in the country.

“We cannot reveal when it will be … but yes, the proposed engine plant will come up. It will be used to serve and support both our domestic and export markets,” said Karl Slym, managing director of GM India.

“The details of the plant will be announced shortly,” he added.

General Motors, which is yet to become a major player in terms of sales in India, aims to increase its presence and capture a 10 per cent market share in three years.

Slym, who has replaced Rajeev Chaba as the managing director of GM India, said, “The Captiva will initially be brought in as a completely built unit (CBU). We will study the market before deciding whether to assemble the car here.”

The Captiva will compete against the CR-V of Honda Siel and the Grand Vitara of Maruti Suzuki, which are also sold as CBUs.

Setting up a powertrain facility will help GM reduce the cost of importing engines, which it does for all its models except Tavera, which has an almost 97 per cent localisation content.

The company pays an 80 per cent import duty to bring engines from abroad, making its cars less competitive than Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motors India, said GM India vice-president P. Balendran.

GM India is in talks with various state governments to set up the engine plant, but is likely to zero in on Maharashtra.

The company’s car plant in Talegaon will start production by September next year and will have a capacity of 1.4 lakh units.

This will be in addition to the 85,000 units from its Halol plant in Gujarat.

“Apart from Captiva, we will also launch a small car by the end of the next calendar year. The car can either be a variant of the Spark or any other model from GM’s global stable,” said Balendran.

On the sales target for this fiscal, he said, “The company was confident of selling more than 60,000 units this fiscal, of which 22,000 units would be the Tavera and 18,000 units the hatchback Spark.”

To celebrate the centennial year of its parent, GM India is offering a discount of Rs 59,000 on the Spark from October 12 to 22.

“The response to our discount scheme has been very encouraging and we have booked 10,000 Sparks during the discount period. The cars will be delivered over the next two months,” said Balendran.