GMI vice president (marketing), Rajeev Chaba said that such a facility,apart from creating an organised used car market, will come in handy fordrawing customers to experience the Opel product range. Though GMI, atpresent does not have a trade in scheme where a customer can drive in anycar and drive out an Opel, he did not rule out such an option in thefuture.

GMI will be training its dealers before they enter the used car market. Theywill have to comply with the various check-lists provided by GMI for buying,refurbishing and selling the car. Cars which are more than five years oldwill not be bought and cars that are bought will be reconditioned as per the110 point GMI checklist before it is sold back with a warranty. For Opelmodels the warranty is six months while for others it is three months. Itmay be recalled that Ford India had announced a similar facility `FordAssured' recently. Meanwhile, GMI's Chennai dealer ACT India inauguratedtheir state-of-the-art workshop in Chennai. The facility built at the costof Rs 60 lakh has 48 bays.

The workshop was opened by Basil Drosso, executive director, GM-Asia PacificOperations. Speaking on the occasion, he said that GM is in India for thelong haul and has offered two of its best German designed products for thecountry. GMI, he added, has dropped prices of spares by 24 per centconsequent to indigenisation. Opel Astra has local content to the tune of 70per cent and Opel Corsa around 45 per cent (will be increased to 50 per centby end of the year). GMI, during April sold 335 Corsa and 250 Astra models.This is as against 300 Corsa and 450 Astra models in the month of March.