Letters: Small car haven

Volkswagen’s decision to buy a stake in Suzuki Motor Company of Japan is proof of just how far Maruti Suzuki India Limited has come in Suzuki’s global activities. Under the agreement, apart from the larger capacity diesel engines that Suzuki will now be able to source from the German auto-maker, it will supply small cars that Volkswagen will sell under its brand name in Europe.

While a part of this work will undoubtedly get done in other Suzuki plants across the world, a lion’s share of the work is likely to come to the India operations of Suzuki.

In the early ’90s, whenever any work had to be done on Maruti’s bodywork/design, this was done by Suzuki engineers based in Japan. It was only in the early 2000s that Maruti began to develop enough of a capability to begin doing design work on its own. This was first seen in the Zen’s facelift. The real change came later when, in the case of the Swift, a large part of the engineering R&D was done by Maruti’s engineers who were seconded to Suzuki’s plant in Japan.

Since Suzuki was impressed with the potential that its India operations were showing, its next large investment in India even included a test track and R&D facilities.

Namit Bhalla, New Delhi