Chevrolet Beat.

The mini car is priced aggressively under Rs 400,000 to take on Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motor. The two are India's largest and second largest carmakers by volumes, respectively. Beat sports a 1,200 cc petrol engine with the base model priced at Rs 3.34 lakh and going up to Rs 3.94 lakh for the top variant (ex-showroom, New Delhi). Chevrolet Beat will take on contemporaries -- A-Star, Swift, Ritz, Santro, i10, Getz and i20 -- in a market where small cars constitute 78 per cent of the two million cars sold per year.

"The Beat will be our highest seller this year after Spark, which sold 45,000 units last year. We expect to easily breakthrough the 100,000 unit sales mark in 2010," president and managing director of GM India Karl Slym told a press conference.

Beat is the company's second car under GM's global 300 series platform after the Cruze sedan, which was introduced in September last year. GM India sold about 70,000 units in 2009, Slym said. It already sells two other small cars -- the Spark and the Aveo U-VA in the Indian market.

"A diesel version of Beat will be rolled out later this year," Slym said. The carmaker will also start exports of the hatchback to European and A s i a - Pa c i f i c markets by the end of the year, totaling retail in about 150 countries.

Beat is manufactured with 60 per cent local content, and within the first year Slym expects localisation to go up to 90 per cent.

"The Talegaon factory will go on a second shift this year with the introduction of the Beat," Slym said. The Talegaon factory has a capacity of producing 140,000 cars annually.

Other top global carmakers Toyota Motor, Volkswagen and Ford Motor are also set to storm in with their compact cars this year. The local car unit of Suzuki already sells six hatchbacks, holding almost two-third of the Indian car market.