>IIT-B student wins Chevrolet design award

>John Paul Xavier, an aspiring automotive design engineer, was declared the winner of the ‘Design the Next Chevrolet’ contest held in association with Autocar India, at an event in Mumbai on Friday. Xavier, 25, a student of Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) in the product design department, will get a Chevrolet Beat as his prize.

The contest, kicked off in September last year, received more than 1,200 entries. Commenting on the designs, Sumit Sawhney, Vice President – Sales, Marketing & Aftersales, General Motors India said, “They were outstanding. Students had done a great work over these models. In the coming years, we will see more Asian and Indian designs adopted by car manufacturers. I see manufacturers bringing their design studios to India in the coming years.”

“We are overwhelmed by the kind of response that we have received. Chevrolet has completed 100 years of existence and our investment in India has gone up substantially. We now have a full fledged technical and design centre in Bangalore with about 2,000 dedicated engineers working on various developments,” he added.

Apart from Sawhney, the jury for the contest comprised Karl Slym, President and Managing Director, General Motors India, design expert Dilip Chabbria, Hormazd Sorabjee, Editor-in-Chief, Autocar India and Anil Saini, Director – GM India Design, Global Network Teams.

Talking to the media at the event, Sawhney said the company will be introduce six new vehicles by the year 2011-2012 in about 14 different fuel variants. “At this time, I cannot share the specifics of this, but we will launch these six vehicles in 14 different fuel options,” he said.

Talking about a few plans which are on, he said that the company will be soon launching its Beat and Spark model with LPG fuel option. He, however, refused to comment on introducing an electric vehicle. “We will be showcasing something very interesting on this front very soon. We have already launched Chevrolet Volt in North America. GM is working on a lot of environmental friendly solutions and our Bangalore research centre in also supporting global research work,” said Sawhney.

Source: Financial Express, April 16, 2011