[undead]

NEW DELHI: Maruti seems to have come off age after more than two decades it was formed as a joint venture between Japan's Suzuki Motor and the

Indian government. The company is set to develop an all-new model from scratch by 2011 using its Indian engineering strength.

IV Rao, managing executive officer (engineering) of Maruti Suzuki, said the company has been strengthening its engineering and design competencies as it plans to nearly double its engineering workforce by 2010 from 560. "We would like to close March next year with 740 engineers and reach 1000 by 2010," Rao said.

Speaking about the future direction for the Indian R&D team, he said, "Going forward, we would be working on a model that is conceived, developed and designed at Maruti by its own engineering team." Rao's statement indicates the fast-growing stature of Maruti within Suzuki's overall global plans and clearly brings out the future strategy of the Japanese carmaker.

Maruti has been emerging as an important arm for Suzuki's global operations. Last fiscal marked a turning point when it overtook Suzuki in terms of sales in respective home markets when it sold 7.11 lakh units to Suzuki's 6.73 lakh units in Japan. Suzuki has said that of the three million cars that it wants to sell worldwide, almost 30% would come from Maruti.

Maruti Suzuki's R&D capabilities began with modifying Suzuki cars to Indian conditions and have been growing in line with the company's rising sales performance. It has evolved over the years, becoming big enough to play a part in some of Suzuki's key global design projects like the Swift and the A-Star. Nearly 75 engineers at Maruti have trained in long-term projects at Suzuki, Rao said.

Source : Maruti to build made-in-India car- Automobiles-Auto-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

[aaggoswami]

IIRC, the A-star is almost all Indian engineers effort itself.
It came up in record time after the concept was shown.
I am not sure if the Indian engineers can manage developing a car from scratch as it requires a lot of facalities and resources. They will again have to be dependent on Japan for resources.
But the first step towards this is A-star.
Maruti engineers R & D work was first experimented in older cars like Zen when the original looking Zen came out with a redesigned grille etc. It was all done by Indian engineers.
They also played a small role in development of Swift and then the A-star.
Lets hope for more.
I think they will again first try it out with a small car design.

[Tejas@perioimpl]

Finally something that should have happened a decade ago! However, I am a little pessimistic about this and i hope maruti does a lot of research and testing before they launch something new.

[rawnak]

Go Maruti !!!!, its about time.
May be we can get Indian looking cars and not Japanese ones.
Maruti is one company which truly changed indian car landscape and
ruled it for so many years. Its products (ok i agree they r coming down
from suzuki stable) are reliable and low cost to maintain and for the
common man. SO many households have realised their dream of
owning their 1st car bcos of Maruti.
Maruti u can do it, we can help (ok ok stole that line from home depot)

Go Maruti