Mahindra & Ford May Tie-Up To Build Passenger Vehicles

Ford India's Chennai manufacturing plant has an annual production capacity of around 2 lakh cars. However, Ford currently produces only about 1.2 lakh units from this plant annually.

Ford also has a new plant at Sanand in Gujarat with a capacity to produce 2.4 lakh units, but only around 60 percent is utilised at the moment. Hence, deal with Mahindra will help Ford India's use its current infrastructure to the maximum capacity.

If the tie-up gets through, it will be beneficial for the company. Mahindra, which has its main plants in the western state, will have a manufacturing base in South India with the tie-up with Ford. The tie-up will also significantly decrease the massive investment required to set-up another plant for Mahindra.

As per Times of India, a top source in one of the companies, said, "The talks are at an advanced stage, and several rounds of discussions have already taken place. The idea is to enable M&M to get access to the idle capacity at Ford's Chennai plant, something which will be beneficial for both the companies."

Pawan Goenka, managing director, said, "At any given point of time, we are talking to different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for various possibilities, which can include sharing of platforms, (production) capacities or dealer network. However, I cannot confirm whether we are talking to Ford, or whether we are not talking to them."

Mahindra's best-selling SUV is the XUV500, considered as a true blue SUV. Below is the photo gallery of the XUV500, click to view.