DELHI, India ― In an industrial town 1,200 kilometers southwest of Delhi, India’s fourth-largest carmaker Mahindra & Mahindra has completed a facility to reproduce Ssangyong’s SUV Rexton starting in April this year.

“The factory here will start importing pre-assembled parts of Rexton from Korea in the second quarter. It will be our home base as we enter the Indian market,” said Chung Moo-young, Ssangyong Motor public relations official on Sunday.

The M&M Vehicle Manufacturers Ltd sits in Chakan of Pune, India’s eighth-largest city, where other world class brands such as Audi, BMW, Fiat, Maruti Suzuki, Chevrolet and Hyundai also operate plants. Equipped to produce up to 300,000 vehicles a year, the facility has some of India’s best including high-speed press shop from Germany’s Shuler.

“Our facility has been approved by Ssangyong engineers who came last November to train our workers on assembling kits for Rexton,” Vijay Dhongde, CEO of the plant said. 

The group last week announced that it will aggressively expand its Indian market for Ssangyong by bringing Rexton over. Mahindra is seeking synergy with its Korean affiliate by sharing platforms and cutting costs in developing new vehicles.

Rexton, to be introduced in the Indian market in the second half, will go to Mahindra’s Chakan plant as a complete knock-down kit, or CKD, to be assembled in India. Localizing imported cars though CKD allows Mahindra to avoid import taxes.

All components requiring robotic equipment and the interiors will be installed at the Ssangyong’s Pyeongtaek facility. Transmissions, batteries, widescreens and wheels will be supplied in India. Engines will be obtained locally, just as Mahindra did for its XUV500.

“Our Chakan plant is more than capable of producing Rexton. Our engineers will visit the Pyeongtaek plant in Korea to make sure quality demanded by Ssangyong is met,” Dhongde said.

Vehicles produced in the Chakan plant go to the M&M Research Valley over in Chennai, the country’s sixth most populous city in the southern Bay of Bengal. The research center has design and testing facilities, where final outputs from Chakan go through non-stop testing on the doors, engines, transmissions and emission control for more than 200 hours each. Testing beds for engines have labs that simulate different road and weather conditions for performance and durability tests.

“Our research center has a state-of-art setup for design offices, testing labs and utility buildings to come up with world class vehicles,” B. Bhaumik, head of the research center said.

“It was completed last year, and we’re recruiting top-notch auto researchers from top carmakers from all over the world,” he added.

By Cynthia J. Kim, Korea Herald correspondent
(cynthiak@heraldcorp.com)