TNI Bureau: General Motors hopes to sell close to 50,000 units of the Chevrolet SAIL Sedans in India in 2013. According to a top official at the GM India, the company is confident enough in its newly launched Chevrolet SAIL Sedan for which an annual sales target of 48,000 units has been set.

While it may not sound like much when compared to the fact that Maruti Suzuki’s Swift racks up similar numbers in well under half that time, Chevrolet is looking to make a serious impact at the budget end of the mid-size sedan and the hatchback segment.

Also, GM says that there are no immediate plans to export the Chevrolet Sail from India as the company is only concentrating on the domestic market for now.

Jointly developed by General Motors and its Chinese partner SAIC, the Chevrolet SAIL is based on the SAIL U-VA hatchback that was launched in November 2012. The petrol version comes powered by a 1.2-litre, 4-cylinder unit that puts out 86PS of power and 113Nm of torque, while the diesel version gets an 80PS, 1.3-litre engine. Ex- showroom prices for the base-spec petrol Sail start at Rs 4.99 lakh and go all the way to Rs 7.51 lakh for the top- spec diesel version.

Yet, at a time when the automobile market is slow on account of the high interest rates, it will be a tough task on the part of the carmaker to achieve the set target. The rate of interest plays a vital part in the sales of vehicles in India as 85 per cent of the buyers buy vehicles through finance and only the cut in the interest rate by the RBI will boost the market.