The end of 2009 will see launch of a third small car by General Motors, the fifth largest car manufacturer in the country. The auto major has been enjoying the success of its two car brands, Spark and U-VA in India market.

It was reported by Karl Slym, President & MD, General Motors, India at the launch of the company's bestselling SUV Chevrolet Captiva Automatic, "The new Chevrolet Mini will not be a competition to Tata Motors Nano. We are not in the numbers game. It will be positioned above the Chevrolet U-VA."

The price of the new model will be around that range of UV-A. Chevrolet Mini aims to compete with Hyundai's i20. General Motors will now concentrate on fuel efficiency as consumers are more cautious about mileage after recent oil price increase.

"The car will be made available both in petrol and diesel options, at its Talegaon plant in Maharashtra," said an executive of the company.

It was informed by GM that as of now, the configurations of the novel small car are being tuned to match the Indian road conditions.

Furthermore, GM is also planning to unveil Chevrolet Cruz in the middle of 2009, which would be its first luxury segment car. The company hopes that this car will over show Honda's Accord and Toyota's Camry.

It was confirmed by GM that the one week shutdown at the Halol plant in December last year was basically to help it re-jig production lines for manufacturing the Chevrolet Cruz.

It has also been learnt that GM is thinking to introduce models with the CNG/LPG facility from this year onwards, as a part of its plans to launch vehicles that run on alternative fuels.

Mr. Slym informed, "The Captiva hydrogen fuel variant is available in the US market. It's the lack of infrastructure that prevents us from introducing it in the domestic market."