NEW DELHI — Ford Motor is increasing its focus on the fast-growing car markets of the Asia-Pacific region, executives said Wednesday as they rolled out a new small car in India. The “Figo,” a four-door hatchback with expansive side windows and cat’s-eye headlights, was designed with the help of Indian engineers and will be built in India and shipped to nearby countries. Ford’s top executives introduced the car with techno music and fanfare at a five-star New Delhi hotel and said the car was emblematic of Ford’s new emphasis on the region.
“Asia-Pacific is a really important market for us,” Alan Mulally, chief executive of Ford, said after the Figo’s introduction. “We will accelerate our presence” in the region, he said, and India will play a large part in that push.
The Figo will be available in India in 2010. Ford did not provide any details on the Figo’s likely price or fuel consumption or say which countries it would ship the car to from India.
Ford Motor soldiered through the global recession without seeking bankruptcy protection like its big American peers. But the company still suffered as car sales dropped in North America and Europe, losing $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2009. To date, Ford trails General Motors and Toyota in China and has a tiny presence in India.
The Figo represents the first product of Ford’s $500 million investment to transform its manufacturing plant in Chennai, formerly Madras, in southeast India. Ford has doubled the Chennai plant’s production capacity to 200,000 vehicles a year and will be able to make 250,000 diesel engines a year by 2010, executives said Wednesday.
Reference full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/business/global/24ford.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=ford&st=Search
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