The Italian automaker and its Chinese partner, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., plan to build a Fiat-badged four-door sedan based on the new Dart, which was unveiled Monday at the Detroit auto show.

The partners will start building the sedan in July at a new plant in China's Hunan province.

Exports of the Dart-based sedan to eastern and northern Europe may begin next year. Sales of a Chinese-built Dart-based hatchback variant also could begin in 2013 in southern Europe, a source said.

The Chinese-made Dart will get Fiat-inspired front and rear ends and undergo tweaks to the interior to make sure it stays faithful to the Italian brand, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said in a November interview.

A Fiat spokesman declined to comment on future models, confirming only that the company's five-year plan includes the introduction of a new Fiat-brand compact hatchback and a compact sedan.

The China-built hatchback could potentially replace the slow-selling Bravo in Fiat's European lineup. Bravo sales declined 27 percent to 27,244 units from January to October last year, according to market research firm JATO Dynamics.

Fiat plans to stop making the Bravo next year. The model is built in Cassino, central Italy, where Fiat plans to begin building a compact crossover to rival the hot-selling Nissan Qashqai in late 2013 or early 2014.

The Dart-based Fiat sedan will be about 4,650 mm long and 1,830 mm wide, which makes it about the size of the Ford Focus four-door compact.

While rivals such as Volkswagen AG and General Motors have established profitable and highly productive operations in China, Fiat has been slow to capitalize on the world's largest car market. Fiat has had an unsuccessful joint venture with Nanjing Automobile Corp.

Fiat intends its joint venture with Guangzhou Auto to build 300,000 Fiat sedans and Jeep models annually by 2014, up from the few thousand that the company now imports, according to Fiat's five-year plan.