Car Manufacturers

Car manufacturing has come a long way in India since its beginning in late 1940s. From a modest beginning that comprised of a couple of car manufacturers based totally on foreign technology, today the country boasts of quite a handful of players, mostly native companies that are in the business of car manufacturing. The two auto manufacturers Hindustan Motors and Premier Automobiles that started off in the 1940s have enhanced their production, technological and manufacturing prowess that enables them to offer better and efficient cars to the consumers of this age. Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors and a host of foreign car makers like Ford, Toyota, Suzuki, Honda, Hyundai and Skoda are gradually enhancing their scale of operations and presence in the country sensing the growing business opportunity for the car makers in India.

Hindustan Motors

Hindustan Motors (HM), one of the earliest car manufacturers in India is a CK Birla group company that has a couple of automobile plants at Uttarpara (West Bengal) and Tiruvallur (Tamil Nadu). The company has different levels of collaborations and tie-ups with companies like Mitsubishi and Oka Motors from Japan. The company has cars like various makes of Ambassador and Lancer, Montero, Pajero and one Rural Transport Vehicle (RTV).

Premier Automobiles (PAL) has limited variants of Premier cars while Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has variants of Bolero and Scorpio. The company has recently launched Logan car in collaboration with the French car maker, Renault. Tata Motors is another leading car manufacturer in India that has made a significant contribution to the car manufacturing scene in the country. With cars of various makes and features, Tata Motors has come up with Tata Sierra, Tata Estate, Tata Sumo, Tata Sierra, Tata Indica, Indigo over the last few years.

Maruti

However, it is Maruti that has revolutionized the landscape of car manufacturing in India. The company that started off with its lone plant at Gurgaon (Haryana) in the early 1980s for the manufacturing of a "small family car" Maruti 800 in technical collaboration with Suzuki of Japan, has come up with models like Maruti Omni, Alto, Esteem, Baleno, Swift and scores of their respective variants. In addition to this, the Indian car manufacturers on account of their high productivity and low production costs have enhanced their technical expertise and gradually made their presence noticed in the global markets. Indian car manufacturers have scaled up their production of cars and a substantial number of them are being exported to countries worldwide.

Car manufacturing has entered into another dramatic phase in India in recent times. The global auto majors like Ford, Toyota, Suzuki and Hyundai have set up manufacturing plants in India and are using India as an important production base to source their market requirements both for India as well as the global market. The growth of autoparts manufacturers in India has also been pehenomenal on the sidelines of automobile manufacturering.