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New Matiz variant by July

BS Corporate Bureau

The beleaguered Daewoo Motors India Ltd is all set to launch a limited edition variant of its small car -- Matiz -- in early-July.

Boasting of features such as a chrome front grill and chrome headlights, the model will be priced over Rs 379,000 (ex-showroom, Delhi), a premium of around Rs 2,500 over with the top-end version of the Matiz, company officials said.

DMIL would roll out only 200 units of the limited edition Matiz. At present, Daewoo has four variants of the Matiz. During the fiscal ended March 31, 2001, DMIL sold 42,960 cars, registering a 6.8 per cent rise in sales. However, it had posted a net loss of Rs 3.40 billion over a sales turnover of Rs 9.14 billion in the financial year ended March 31, 2001.

DMIL managing director and CEO, Young Tae Cho said at a press meet today that the company has targeted savings of Rs 850 million this fiscal through cost cuts.

"During the last financial year, we saved Rs 580 million through cost-cutting," Cho said. "Our present debt stands at about Rs 10 billion," Cho said, adding talks were on with the financial institutions like ICICI and IDBI for rescheduling of the debts.

"We have got a positive response from financial institutions for our debt restructuring programme," he said. Cho said the company was "carefully reviewing" its plans for launching three new cars in the current year. "We are studying which variants of the three cars should be launched in the Indian market," he said.

DMIL had earlier announced that it would launch three new cars in the mid-size and luxury segment -- Lanos, Nubira and Magnus -- during the current calendar year.

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