Team-BHP - Chevy Optra now with 48 MONTH WARRANTY!

The General has got back to his aggressive self, the Chevrolet Optra 1.8 is now available with a whopping 80000 km/4 year warranty! After shaking up the American market with its strong 0% finance schemes (which Ford and Chrysler were forced to follow), the General has been the first to offer a 48 month bumper-to-bumper warranty on its Indian offering - The Optra.

The length and coverage of the warranty always indicates a manufacturers faith in its own product. Warranty repairs can be a huge drain to the resources of todays car manufacturers (just ask Tata) and no-one is going to offer a comprehensive warranty program unless they believe that their car will be able to live up to it.

I remember Daewoo had shaken up the market ages back with its two year warranties. Hyundai offers a 5 year bumper to bumper (7 sometimes) in the US and 10 years/100,000 miles (160,000 km) on its engines and transmissions. Tata itself offers really long warranties on the Safari, Sierra and City Rover in select european markets but only 18 months in India.

Chevrolet has paved the way for others to follow, after all Japanese car makers who live the market by their reliable products will have to up the ante on their measly one year warranties.

Just go to GMI's website Chevy India and then go visit Hindustan Motors. The HM idiots have not even updated their website to include the Lancer 1.8 Invex Lancer India. It still features their birthday edition lancer, a car that was available almost 6 months back - Not even a mention of the Lancer 1.8!!

Mark my words, just the way Hyundai has shot up in India, so will GMI. Wait for their Chevy Spark and resulting volumes to come out. This is a company commited to India and one that has learnt from its mistakes.

Job well done, GMI.

GTO

Yes GTO, GMI is pretty much on a roll these days. I guess it stems from the fact that they sat for 7 years doing just 10,000 units a year at best. And while the whole industry grew and expanded, GM only offered two cars, and that too not the best in their segments.

Now with their new range, they should be getting somewhere. And the 4 year warranty is no surprise. What is surprising though is that it is an 80,000km warranty. And thats a huge distance for an average car to cover in our country in 4 years. Damn neat! Right now though, the car that really matters is the Spark. What really GMI could do is pretty simple. Get both the engines. Kill the Alto LXi with the 800cc engine and take on the Zen, ALto1.1 and Santro with their 1.1. Look at Maruti. They've seen volumes with the ALto grow to 6-7000 units a month. Even if GMI does 5000 units on an average with just the spark every month, just imagine what ripples its gonna cause in the industry.

And i won't be surprised if the Spark succeeds either. The matiz was well appreciated by everyone earlier on, and many stopped short of buying just cuz of the uncertainty and poor service setup. Now with certainty coming in, all it needs to do is beef up the service setup. And watch them laugh all the way to the bank....

Revvmaster

General Motors IS the largest auto manufacturer in the world. Theres no doubt that Matiz prices will now stabilise to more realistic levels, as its a pretty fantastic city car.

The Spark will surely get GM the volumes its looking at, and for a good bargain as they seem to have gotten the Daewoo India plant (which makes Matiz's) for a throwaway price!!

Another interesting product from the GM stable to watch out for will be the utility vehicle to combat the Scorpio + Qualis in the Indian market place.

Buckle up, its going to be a fun battle.

GTO

The one company in India that needs to come out with a warranty like this is Fiat India. Not because the car's they have are bad, in fact, they have some of the most suited for india cars in the country today!. Unfortunately, the image of fiat india is in the doldrums over here. partly due to their own bungling and partly due to some biased magazines like overdrive that have murdered the palio's zooming sales. Well, fiat or any other company can't do anything about biased auto magazines but what they can do is go about silently trying improve their image over here. A warranty like this should work well for Fiat india.

GM is now offering "The Cashless Ownership Offer". This is a unique zero ownership offer that will take care of labour cost, parts for all services, maintenance and running repairs for a period of three years or 45,000 km, whichever occurs earlier, or customers of its cars.

This is part of the 5th anniversary celebration of General Motors India.

The Hindu Business Line : GM's cashless offer

Do GM cars still come with the 4 year/80K kms warranty?

Despite that and the cashless offer, GM still struggles to sell it's cars compared to Honda. Heck, forget Honda, the Optra Magnum TCDi is almost butchered every month at the sales charts by the Octavia.

It's said the Indian customer is very penny conscious. Where did that Indian customer go now? Why are these offers not translating into sales?

Quote:

Originally Posted by amit (Post 771726)

I personally think its because us Indians always thinks bad things will not happen to us. Or we think we are very clever. I mentioned the BMW cashless scheme to a few people and they felt that if BMW was offering this, the cars must be reliable and they make a bit of money on it, and therefore they would hypothetically opt out of the scheme.

I mention this because 3-4 years back when 3rd party insurance was common, I knew quite a few people who had expensive cars that had only 3rd party insurance.

I know of two idiots who drove 70-80 kms at night after the headlights failed. WHY? They were returning from a temple trip and therefore nothing will happen to them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloo (Post 771667)

Nice reason. I bet this celebration is going to last long!

I guess they pay for everything else except fuel. They might take a cue from Virgin Mobile (where you get 10 paise for every minute), they might pay for a Km fuel, for every 10Km run.

Quote:

Originally Posted by diabloo (Post 771667)

This is a unique zero ownership offer that will take care of labour cost, parts for all services, maintenance and running repairs for a period of three years or 45,000 km,