SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co. (SGMW), the U.S. automaker's joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. and the city of Liuzhou, will ship vehicle kits from China.

Initially, the partners will export the five-seat Wuling Hongguang and the eight-seat Hongtu microvans, said Matthew Tsien, vice president of SGMW.

Those two models will be renamed the CN100 and N200 respectively.

"We'll see the launch of the Wuling series of products in India starting next year," said Tsien in an interview with Automotive News China last week in the southwest China city of Chengdu.

India's small towns and rural areas should be fertile territory for General Motors and SAIC. Newly prosperous entrepreneurs need cheap, versatile transportation to carry their goods, according to Tsien.

The leading player in that segment in India is Maruti Suzuki, Suzuki Motor Corp.'s Indian subsidiary. Since GM does not produce microvans in India, it will import its Chinese models.

These vehicles will be sold in India under the Chevrolet brand, instead of the Wuling brand as they are in China.

Fitted with a 1.2- or 1.4-liter engine, the five-seat CN100 is 4,305 mm long, 1680 wide, and 1,750 mm tall.

Mounted with 1.15- or 1.2-liter engine, the eight-seat N200 is 3,860 mm wide, 1,570 mm wide and 1,860 mm tall.

In China, the CN100 has a starting price of 44,800 yuan ($7,000) while the N200 starts at 45,800 yuan. Both are fitted with gasoline engines.

GM and SAIC will have to modify their left-hand drive Chinese microvans for India's right-hand drive market, Tsien notes.
The partners also must expand their lineup of engines. "India is a heavy diesel market, so to be competitive, we have to have diesel offerings in addition to gasoline offerings," Tsien explained.

In 2009, GM and SAIC set up a joint venture in India to introduce SGMW's microvans and Shanghai GM's small passenger cars to India. Shanghai GM is a joint venture between SAIC and GM.

China's microvan market

Established in 2002 in Liuzhou in southwest China, SGMW has become the country's largest producer of microvans.

SAIC holds a 50.1 percent share; GM has a 44 percent stake and Liuzhou has 5.9 percent. It is China's largest microvan maker.

With the aid of various government incentives, SGMW's microvan sales soared 65 percent in 2009 and 15 percent in 2010.

But China's microvan market went soft after the government ended its tax breaks and scrappage subsidy last December. In the first six months of 2011, SGMW's microvan sales slipped 5 percent year-on-year to 610,945 units, according to J.D. Power.
In Tsien's opinion, slowing microvan sales are not necessarily a bad thing.

"In 2009 and 2010 we were really struggling with capacity because we just couldn't build enough to meet market demand," he said. "In the first half of this year... the market has returned to a little bit more normal conditions."