Ford India Working on small hatch, sub-4 metre sedan and a compact sedan

American carmaker Ford is aiming to make India as a compact car global production hub under a project codenamed B562 once its Sanand, Gujarat based plant comes into operation in 2014. Under the B562 project, the company is developing a common compact car platform on which three different cars will be developed including a small hatchback, a sub-4 metre sedan and a midsize compact sedan. All the three cars are likely to be rolled out over the next two-three years.

ET claims that the move is part of Ford's global production restructuring plan which will make India an equally important base against other base in Europe and across the globe. And the details on the Project B562 has been revealed to ET by four people close to the development. The hatchback and mid-size compact sedan's development work is happening rapidly, however the sub-4 metre sedan is still under consideration, informed people in the know of the development.

During a recent media interaction Alan Mulally, Global CEO of Ford Motor Company also spoke about significance of making India a global manufacturing base. He said, "The demand is dramatically down for cars in Europe, like it was in United States. So we are moving production, consolidating our facilities, but at the same time, we are accelerating the new vehicles. Customers want value, so it is going to take us a couple of years to finish that restructuring, we are doing the right thing for the customers and right thing for Ford,"

The new hatchback could be positioned alongside the existing Figo, the sub-4 metre sedan will compete against the likes of Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire and Honda Amaze, while the mid-size compact sedan will replace the Fiesta Classic. In global markets, the new hatchback will possibly replace the Ka small car, people close to the company informed.

"The company plans to produce over 2,00,000 cars on B562 platform by 2015-16 and over 30-50% is planned to be exported to the overseas markets over a period of time. The company tested the overseas markets with Figo, they now plan to aggressively expand exports with the EcoSport and with the B562 cars, the company intends to make the best use of its competitive production base in India," said one of the four people close to the development.

Source: ET