General Motors to bring Cadillac in India

General Motors India (GMI) is gearing up to launch the iconic Cadillac range of luxury cars in India. The US auto giant has, however, put off its plans to introduce luxury multi-purpose vehicle Hummer in the country. “We are now vying for the luxury space.

The company was planning to launch SUV Hummer earlier but its entry now seems distant as consumer sentiment has changed. So, we have zeroed in on the Cadillac CTS sedan, which was showcased in the Auto Expo last year,” GMI president and MD Karl Slym told.

The Cadillac CTS would compete with the Mercedez Benz, Audi and BMW which together sell 6,000 cars in the country annually. The Cadillac that was showcased in India came with a 3.6-litre direct-injection V-6 VVT engine delivering 311 bhp of power. The partly handcrafted car had large 18-inch wheels and was expected to cost the consumer Rs 50-60 lakh.

GMI has already announced the launch of Cruse sedan around June-July , which will compete with Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla and Hyundai Sonata in the premium car segment. It will also launch a small car that will complement Spark in the compact segment. It currently sells seven vehicles in Indian market, all under the Chevrolet portfolio spanning from the Spark at the starting price of Rs 2.59 lakh to the Captiva SUV at Rs 20.30 lakh.

“We are gearing up to launch more products powered by alternative fuels like CNG and LPG. We have already launched Optra sedan on CNG and will launch a few more vehicles fired by LPG in the first half of this year,” Mr Slym said.

The company launched the automatic transmission variant of its all-wheel drive sports utility vehicle Captiva priced at Rs 20.3 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi) on Friday. Captiva was launched at the Auto Expo last year and over 2,500 units have been sold so far. GM had sold 47,786 vehicles in the April-December period in the domestic market.

HYUNDAI i30

Nissan Murano

Interiors of NISSAN

A car from MICROSOFT

At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated” If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon”.

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors made the following contribution to the debate” If GM had developed technology like Microsoft we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason what so ever you car would crash twice a day

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you’d have to buy a new car

3. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all the car windows, shut it off, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this, restart and drive on

4. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you’d have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you’d accept this too.

5. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever your car would lock you and out and refuse to let you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive- but it would only run on 5% of the roads

7. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.

8. The oil engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced a ‘General Car Fault’ warning light.

9. We’d all have to switch to Microsoft petrol and lubricants but the packaging would be superb

10. The air bag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off

11. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened

12. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft cassettes . Unless of course you upgrade to use existing stuff

13. If you couldn’t afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow your friends, and then copy it

14. Every time Microsoft introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car

15. Microsoft would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of automobile Association Road maps ( now a Microsoft subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by %50 or more

16. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off