At least four new models will start rolling out in a few months from the factories of Ford India Pvt. Ltd, Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd, Volkswagen India Pvt. Ltd and General Motors India Pvt. Ltd (GM), joining a race in which Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Hyundai Motor India Ltd and Tata Motors Ltd are clear leaders.

The new models—the Ford Figo, the Nissan Micra, the Volkswagen Polo and the Chevrolet Beat—will hit the road in the first six months of next year and will seek to take advantage of the increased income in the hands of Indians as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government seeks to push growth to 8-9% levels over the next few years.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee estimates growth this year at 7%-plus, indicating a recovery from the slowdown caused by the financial crisis, after the fastest economic expansion in 15 months in the July-September quarter.

India’s auto industry was in any case among the first sectors to recover from the slump. Auto sales have surged 18% to 7.8 million in the eight months from April to November. Passenger vehicles sales have gone up 21% to 1.2 million.

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Kapil Arora, partner at consulting firm Ernst and Young, says a 5-10% market share target in the initial years of the launch, would be ambitious. “Factors like a strong brand reputation, wide reach and pricing advantage will give the existing players like Maruti and Hyundai, an advantage over the new ones,” he said.

The new entrants will add capacity of half-a-million cars in the next two to three years, saddling the industry with excess capacity by 2012-13, according to Dilip Chenoy, director general at the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, a lobby group. While the models will also be exported to other emerging markets, they will come on top of the 1.5 million cars sold locally in the year to 31 March. The slack will be picked up by 2014-15, Chenoy said. “While the big three (Maruti, Hyundai and Tata Motors) will lose market share, the overall market will grow.”