The American automaker, Ford Motors, announced the end of its journey in India last month. The brand was one of the oldest foreign carmakers in India and had been running its operations since 1995. In the announcement, the company mentioned the closure of its two facilities in the country. It was said that the Sanand plant in Gujarat would end its production operations towards the end of 2021 and the Chennai engine and assembly plant would cease its activities at the end of June 2022. Now, following that the last car was produced at its Sanand plant recently.
The brand cited the reason for leaving the country as a continuous loss for the past 10 years, and in spite of trying its best, the company failed to maintain its presence in the Indian car market. EcoSport, Endeavour, Figo, Aspire and Freestyle were the five models by the company that were produced locally. Out of them, the EcoSport was the best-selling and highly exported model from India. However, the exit was announced but small-scale manufacturing activities were still in operation and as per the sources, the last units of Figo, Aspire and Freestyle have been produced already.
These models were presented to the market to challenge the Maruti Swift and Dzire, which were selling over 40k units monthly at one point. Unfortunately, Ford has never been successful in beating Maruti Suzuki in terms of sales. As of now, both plants are being shut down by the brand. Tata Motors is likely to take over the Chennai plant. The Tata Group has a significant presence in Tamil Nadu in software, tea, chemicals, and electricity, and it is now planning to take over the Ford car production site. If Tata does acquire the Ford plant in Chennai, it will be great news for thousands of Ford employees.
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