Archive for India

The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Bajaj Auto will form a new joint-venture in India, held 50% by Bajaj Auto, 25% by Renault and 25% by Nissan. The new joint venture will develop and produce a new low cost car called the ULC, which would have a price tag of USD2,500 onwards. Not sure what ULC stands for at this moment, but I’m guessing something to the lines of Ultra Low Cost.

The Bajaj ULC will most likely be a production version of the Bajaj Lite concept car (shown above) displayed at the New Delhi Auto Show earlier this year. The Bajaj Lite concept featured a 2-cylinder engine and driven to the wheels via what Bajaj says is a new type of transmission that is a cross between a manual and an automatic.

That sounds like a manual with a computer controlled clutch like the Savvy’s AMT gearbox to me, but we’ll see what Bajaj has up its sleeves. Could a centrifugal clutch like a bike’s (Bajaj is a bike maker) be used on a car? Actually, it has been used in the past, but we’re talking about cars from the 1930s here.

Bajaj managing director Rajiv Bajaj was quoted referring to the Lite concept to say, “It will be priced competitively but not sell on the pricing. Offering the customer twice the fuel economy is more effective than offering half the price.”

Two more photos of the Bajaj Lite concept after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Renault-Nissan and Bajaj team up for USD2,500 car

MV Agusta F4 Tamburini

Apparently MV Agusta could have a new owner or at least a large shareholder in the form of Tata Motors, according to Italian bike magazine euroMoto. MV Agusta used to be owned by Proton and was disposed of a few years ago for a sum fo 1 Euro. Since then, MV Agusta’s new owners have not been able to do much with the company, and its ails continue, lacking funds to channel towards new product development.

Source [ Translated ]

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Business Times reports quoting sources that there are currently four runners in the race for the Tata franchise in Malaysia, currently held by DRB-HICOM’s Scott & English (M) Sdn Bhd. The current franchise agreement will expire in May 2008, and DRB-HICOM holders themselves have expressed that letting the franchise go is one of the options being considered pending results from an internal evaluation.

The interested parties are: 1) DRB-HICOM of course, this would mean they would keep the franchise, 2) the owners of Brooklands Motors Sdn Bhd (Citroen) and Competitive Supreme Sdn Bhd (Ssangyong), 3) Sime Darby Berhad (BMW, Hyundai, Inokom, Alfa Romeo, Land Rover) and 4) Naza.

If Naza gets a hold of the Tata franchise, it will be able to sell the Tata Nano here, probably positioned lower than the Naza Forza. Sime Darby will already have a relationship with Tata through its Land Rover distributorship here as Land Rover has just recently been bought over by Tata.

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Tata Nano archive at this blog

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The Tata Indica Silhouette concept car is unlike what you’d expect an Indica to be. This is not a budget city car with a tiny engine, but rather a track monster powered by a 3.5 liter V6 mounted at the rear of the car, powering the rear wheels as well. This setup instantly reminds us of the Renault Clio V6, but this isn’t exactly a production road car, so think of it more of similiar to the Golf GTI W12-650.

The 3.5 liter V6 engine (a race-ready version of the Renault-Nissan VQ engine) produces 330 PS at 7.000rpm and sends the 850kg Tata Indica Silhouette barrelling down the roads up to the 100km/h mark in just 4.5 seconds, up to a top speed of 270km/h. The engine is mated to a 6-speed sequential gearbox.

The 2-seater car is built on a space frame steel chassis made with aeronautical steel and uses the engine as a stress member. The car uses an adjustable progressive rate pneumatic suspension system. For track duties, it has a data logging system and a high-accuracy GPS unit.

So in reality this isn’t exactly an Indica adapted to fit a V6 in the rear, but a space frame and an engine with a shell made to look like an Indica put on top of it, much like R3’s rear wheel drive Waja.

The Ajanta group in India currently produces electric scooters and bikes under the Oreva brand, but in the works is a new electric car which Ajanta aims to price at Rs 85,000, or 0.85 lakh Indian rupees.

Production of an electric car is not difficult for us as the technology is almost similar and 70 per cent of its parts can be produced in-house, giving us an edge over the vehicle’s pricing,” said Ajanta group director Jaysukh Patel.

The company’s R&D department is currently studying both the feasibility of an electric car under Indian motoring conditions, as well as other electric cars. THe TImes of India’s sources say Ajanta has purchased as many as 8 different electric cars from different manufacturers for study.

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DRB-HICOM is currently evaluating whether or not to keep the Tata franchise in Malaysia, according to DRB-HICOM group managing director Datuk Mohd Khamil Jamil. Options currently are the logical three - A) keep as is, B) expand, or C) let go. According to Business Times, DRB-HICOM officials will be meeting up with representatives from Tata in May 2008 to discuss the future of the brand in Malaysia.

The current agreement between DRB-HICOM 70% owned Scott & English (M) Sdn Bhd and Tata Motors will expire by June 2008.

Tata is currently ramping up efforts in our region, with the new Tata Xenon (shown above) launched in Thailand not too long ago. Tata has been constantly featured in world headlines for the past few months thanks to its Tata Nano low cost car project and its recent acquisition of the Jaguar and Land Rover premium brands.

The Jaguar and Land Rover deal has been sealed, and the two companies go to Tata Motors, which will pay US$2.3 billion for them. As part of the deal, Ford will inject US$600 million of the US$2.3 billion into the two companies’ pension funds, leaving about US$1.7 billion remaining for Ford’s coffers. Ford will have no stake in the companies after the sale is completed.

Most of the management team will be retained, and Ford will continue to supply Jaguar and Land Rover with powertrains and technology for the time being, depending on existing supply agreements. Ford Motor Credit Co will also provide financing for Jaguar and Land Rover dealers and customers for the period of up to 12 months. The deal includes the Rover, Daimler and Lanchester brand names.

Tata Motors says it was confident this investment would have a positive effect on its balance sheet in the long run. Shareholders do not seem to share these sentiments as Tata Motors shares dropped as much as 7.3% yesterday, finally settling on a 3.6% drop at the end of the day as analysts says the deal will be a strain on the balance sheet. As for Ford, the money will help it focus on turning around its North American operations, which are currently operating at a loss.

The other bids for Jaguar and Land Rover are former Ford CEO Jacques Nasser’s One Equity Partners, Ripplewood, and Texas Pacific Group, which was advised by Bob Dover, CEO of Jaguar and Land Rover between 2002 and 2003.

Indian paper The Telegraph has revealed to us one of the partners in India that Proton is talking to. Argentum Motors is the new owner of the defunct Daewoo Motors plant in Surajpur, Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India.

Proton is reportedly talking to Argentum Motors on using the plant for contract manufacturing or sourcing of components. Argentum executive Ajay Singh says Proton was looking into ways to bring down production costs for its Indian market entry, and the Argentum plant provided some ways to achieve that goal. He added that Argentum is also talking to other manufacturers like Daimler AG.

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Proton to finalise India plan by mid-2008
Proton and the Indian automotive industry

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Proton plans to finalise its India strategy by the middle of 2008, according to its managing director Datuk Syed Zainal in a report by The Star yesterday. A suitable partner (or partners) for the Indian market would have the following qualities:

• manufacturing and distribution experience
• car design and localisation capabilites

Proton will be targetting the B-segment and C-segment in India with cars like the Proton Saga and the Proton Person, with a strategy similiar to the one they used in China, which was getting a Chinese manufacturer to buy CKD kits of the GEN2 (CBU imports initially) and handle sales and marketing themselves in their own market which they would be familiar with, something Proton would not have experience with.

Read my previous article for my thoughts on how Proton could fit into the Indian automotive industry: Proton and the Indian automotive industry. It was written before the Saga launch so at that point we were still speculating the Saga’s dimensions.

On the local scenes, there will be something nice from Proton next week

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Tata is inching very closely to acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company, and everyone is already assuming the two companies are in Tata’s hands, in a deal that analysts have pegged at being worth between US$1.5 to US2.0 billion.

One company that is very happy about all of this is Fiat, who has a close relationship with Tata. Tata uses Fiat turbodiesel engines in their cars, and the two companies have a partnership worth Rs 4000 crore (3.3 billion ringgit) in India.

Fiat says this will most likely allow the Italian company to get access to Jaguar’s technologies. It is particularly interested in Jaguar’s rear wheel drive platform as well as Land Rover’s four-wheel drive technology. Yup, you guessed right - the first model from the Fiat group to benefit from this is most likely the new flagship Alfa Romeo 169, which Fiat plans to develop as a rear wheel drive car.

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