NEW DELHI, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The Indian car unit of Honda Motor Co launched a new version of its top-selling City model on Thursday which it hoped would help the Japanese giant nearly double daily production.
"Our daily production will be 100 cars from 53 now," H. Yamada, president of Honda Siel, a joint venture between Japan's second largest automaker and local firm Siel Ltd, told reporters.
"Basically, we are aiming at selling 2,000 units of the new City each month."
The company was selling about 1,000 units of the earlier City model each month.
Yamada said the City, with a showroom price of between 650,000-850,000 rupees, was aimed at customers who were either upgrading to a sedan or buying an additional car.
He said the company had invested about 2.0 billion rupees ($44.2 million) in India over the past two years to upgrade facilities and launch three new models, including the latest one.
Honda Siel, which entered the Indian car market in December 1997, has a plant on the outskirts of New Delhi that makes the City sedan and the Accord luxury family car.
Both models are positioned in India's mid-car segment, which accounts for nearly a fifth of the new car market of 542,000 units a year. Its main competitors include the Indian unit of Hyundai, Ford and General Motors.
The company also sells the fully imported CR-V sports utility vehicle in India. ($1 = 45.29 rupees)