Renault and Mahindra, which jointly manufacture the sedan Logan in India, will expand their product portfolio to better utilise the capacity at their Nashik plant in Maharashtra. This comes as a U-turn for both car makers who had in the past ruled out expanding the product line-up in the joint venture in the short term. The scope of the current joint venture does not go beyond manufacturing Logan and integrating the distribution and sales networks.
“We are currently assessing the viability of four to five Renault cars to be manufactured in the facility and will finalise the models with Mahindra,” Ashish Sinharoy, Renault India’s senior vice president of corporate affairs said.
The Mahindra-Renault Logan did very well in the first year of its launch but sales have have plummeted. The Nashik plant has been under-utilised and the dealer network is also under-selling. Thus Mahindra-Renault are actively looking at optimising the utilisation and have decided to introduce new models in their line-up.
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April 29th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Good grief ! Renault – please decide if you will be launching new vehicles in India or not and please give out a formal press release saying “this is our final answer”. Almost every other day we hear it is on or it is off alternatively regarding new vehicles. I don’t think such a confused approach is going to go well with potential customers. If there are definite dates for launches or at least years of launches many people may wait and delay their current purchase plans specially if worthy cars such as the Megane or the Sandero come out (especially at a good price and with a diesel and good features).
PS: Nissan this goes for you as well
. Please decide soon.
April 29th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Sushil, I totally agree. Renault is so confused, they keep giving contradictory reports to the media. First they say, no launch and then they say something else. They need to attend “make up your mind” classes.