The Hindu Business Line : Ford may use existing platform for small car project

Chennai, Feb. 4 Ford Motor Company is likely to use an existing platform to develop the small car that it plans to launch in India in 2010. It will also follow the same strategy it adopted for developing and launching the Fiesta in India – that of its engineers across different facilities working together to design the car.

“I can safely say we will be using the old shared technology concept. You cannot go from standing start to delivery in two years,” says Mr Arvind Mathew, Managing Director & President, Ford India Pvt Ltd.

He adds that the proposed small car cannot be an all-new brand, but it will be an Indian car.

Ford Motor Company recently announced its decision to invest Rs 2,000 crore ($500 million) in its Indian operations to expand car manufacturing capacity to 2 lakh units and set up an engine manufacturing plant with a capacity of 2.5 lakh units, both by 2010. Ford also said it would launch a small car by that time.

Mr Mathew told Business Line that Ford India engineers would work with their counterparts in Australia, England and Germany on the small car.

He said the new small car would be priced lower than the Ikon, Ford India’s entry-level mid-size sedan. (The base variant of the Ikon sells at Rs 4.82 lakh ex-showroom Chennai.) Ford India would continue to produce the Ikon, which was doing “fairly well.”

To a question, Mr Mathew said the company decided to change its strategy because of the continued growth in sales of small cars. “The volume at the lower end is bigger than at the upper end… the opportunity is much more (at the lower end),” he said.

“We did not think that up until now it was worth to go into that segment. We changed our mind in terms of our priorities,” he said.

Ford would look at selling the new small car in other markets too. “We are predicting that there are a lot of emerging automobile markets that we don’t recognise today. That is why we will design the car along those lines,” Mr Mathew said.