General Motors Corp., the automaker that popularized the Hummer, may sell a mini-car four feet shorter than its biggest offering and more than a foot shorter than anything else it markets in the United States to win back buyers scared off by high fuel prices, Bloomberg reported.

The vehicle is called the Chevrolet Beat, which would normally be reserved for markets such as Asia and Latin America, people familiar with the plan told Bloomberg. It gets as much as 40 miles per gallon, a fuel efficiency topped in this country only by hybrids.



The possible American introduction of the Beat would be one step in a fleet downsizing and shift away from fossil fuel-based vehicles that is already under way at Detroit-based GM. Resigned to $4-a-gallon gasoline and stricter pollution rules, the largest U.S. automaker has recognized that its response must go beyond the mothballing of large truck plants.



“This is a very big change for GM,” said John Wolkonowicz, an analyst at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Mass. “They have no choice. There’s never been as rapid a shift in consumer demand in the history of the auto industry.”

GM, turning 100 this year, has few alternatives to reinventing itself. The company reported its largest annual loss in 2007, $38.7 billion, after a tax accounting change, and hasn’t had a profitable year since 2004. The carmaker’s U.S. market share hovers at the lowest level since 1925, and last year GM was 3,000 cars away from being dethroned by Toyota Motor Corp. as the world’s largest automaker.

The company’s current market value is smaller than that of Mattel Inc., maker of Matchbox cars, and one-tenth what it was in 2000.

Besides the Beat, GM is weighing a list of options for refocusing its auto lineup on fuel efficiency rather than performance. They include the U.S. introduction of a small pickup that’s popular in Latin America and an expansion of the number of versions of the planned Volt plug-in electric car.

GM is also trying to increase production and speed up availability of the successor to the Chevy Cobalt sedan and develop a fuel-efficient alternative to the Cadillac Escalade sport-utility vehicle.