A busy week with a lot happening on many fronts. Most interesting for me – and most read by you – was an announcement from Suzuki in Japan about India that came out of left field and is, I think, a global autobiz first.
We already knew a few things about Suzuki’s 56% owned India subsidiary Maruti Suzuki. Chiefly that industrial relations have been a recent problem, to put it mildly. And there were plans to add a new assembly plant but these had been put on ice as the market has tanked over the last year for a variety of reasons.
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Then came the surprise. Rather than letting the local firm fund and build its own plant, as is more normal with a not fully-owned local distributor, Suzuki decided to fully fund the new plant itself, build vehicles under contract and sell them to Maruti under an agreed cost-plus basis. Gives a new twist to the usual auto industry ‘contract assembly’ arrangements, as I noted.
Also notable – doubtless due to the current difficult Indian market – is Suzuki’s relatively leisurely timeframe with a production start in 2017 – compare that with the 12-18 month period within which Honda and Mazda recently knocked up new full manufacturing plants in Mexico, both due online this year.
Speaking of ‘contract manufacture’, we also had news from Magna regarding a new deal to make another model for BMW at Magna Steyr in Austria when the present Mini Countryman/Paceman run ends which, we reckon, will be in 2016. Our resident ‘product guru’, Glenn Brooks, had expected the Mini twins to be replaced by one model, a small crossover that would be more or less the twin of the next BMW X1, with both on the group’s UKL1 platform, but built, this time, within the group itself (which has also teed up another contract assembler in the Netherlands) and not outsourced to Magna Steyr. Automakers are notoriously retiscent officially on future product plans and source plants but, be assured, Glenn’s on the case.
Quarterly results and variations thereof continued rolling in this week. Honda (slightly) disappointed the analysts, Ford did well, a little better than expected in fact, with more improvement in Europe, and despite some issues in other regions, but did not appear to attract a great deal of attention. Chrysler, boosted by a one off tax gain, posted a healthy net profit and proved for yet another quarter that struggling new owner Fiat would be much worse off without it.
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By GlobalDataStaying with Fiat, we also learned about the new logo and reorganisation associated with the long in gestation but now all but finalised merger.
Results, as always, have been grouped into the usual handy one-stop shop here.
Another intriguing item caught my eye this week – Honda US has become a net exporter. I’m ancient of days enough to remember both the first US motorcycle plant (1979) and car factory (1982) opening way back when and, as I noted this week, it’s a fine milestone and, maybe some way from what was envisaged initially by 1970s planners, such are the changes in the auto industry and global markets in the 31 years since Accord Job One rolled off that Marysville line.
Have a nice weekend.
Graeme Roberts, Deputy Editor, just-auto.com
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