American auto giant’s Indian arm General Motors India today launched the much awaited compact sedan Chevrolet Sail at Rs 4.99 lakh to Rs 7.51 lakh (ex-showroom New Delhi).
The price is competitive enough to take on the fast growing Maruti Suzuki’s Swift Dzire, which is the current segment leader. The car has been launched in both fuel options and 8 variants, while the petrol variants of the sedan will be priced from Rs 4.99-6.41 lakh, the diesel variants will range from Rs 6.29-7.51 lakh.
The car has been based on its hatch sibling Sail UVA, which shares most of its design and parts with it. The car has acres of space, and a boot with capacity of 370 litre, largest in its class, to remind you, it’s not sub-four meter car. The car looks exactly same to that of the UVA, right up to the B-pillar, that is why both the cars look identical from front but only when you move to the side you notice the 8-spoke alloy wheels and a nicely carved boot.
The petrol version of the car comes equipped with the 1.2-litre Smartech, 4-cylinder mill, which also does duty on the Sail UVA and Beat. The engine comes mated to a 5-speed manual gearbox and churns out the maximum power output of 84bhp and 116Nm of torque, with an impressive mileage of 18.2kmpl. While the diesel trims are powered by the 1.3-litre multijet engine, which was co-developed by GM and Fiat. The similar engine does its duty at the segment topper, Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire, newly launched Vista D90, Punto and Swift. The suspension has also been tuned for the Indian road conditions, maintaining sharp driving dynamics.
Interiors of the car are looking good and a bunch of advanced features are on offer with the Sail, however most of the advanced features are offered with the high-end trims only. The car are also feature all modern safety features including Active Safety features like Speed sensitive Auto Door Locks, Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) and Electronic Brake Force Distribution (EBD), passive safety features are Airbags, Seat Belts with Pre-tensioner, Crumple Zones, Collapsible Steering System & Side Impact Beams in the doors make it one of the safest cars in the class.
The sail is a global product and has been developed as a global passenger car platform meant for emerging markets like south eastern Asia. The Sail sedan is one of the fastest selling cars in the Chinese market with annual sales of over half a million units. However GM India’s hopes with the Sail are pretty modest and they would be hoping to garner atleast 10% of that in India. However their last offering the Sail UVA is receiving a very slow response and clocked just 3,000 unit’s sales since its launch.
The Sail sedan fall into the country’s fastest growing segment, which has been growing at the rate of 40% over the last three years where close to 40,000 units are sold in a month. Anil Mehrotra, CFO, General Motors India said “We are hoping to create excitement in the market with new launches like Sail and we hope to garner a significant share in the entry level sedan market.” The new sedan will compete with the likes of Maruti Suzuki DZire, Toyota Etios, Ford Classic, Mahindra Verito and the Tata Indigo eCS.