Ford Motor Company plans to use the lessons learnt from developing the Figo in India for other compact car projects across the world.

“We are working on similar small-car programmes in Europe, South America and Australia and have invited engineers in India who worked on the Figo to share their learnings,” Mr Joe Hinrichs, Group Vice-President and President for Asia-Pacific and Africa, told Business Line in a recent interview.

The Figo was developed jointly by engineers in India and the Asia-Pacific, and the inputs from this exercise are now being extended to Ford's global product portfolio of B and C segment cars.

According to Mr Michael Boneham, President and Managing Director, Ford India, the idea was to use the knowledge base here to work on global platforms across the world.

“India is a key player in terms of corporate intelligence for our programmes, working forward. We are going to use that intelligence from here in our global product development strategy. We have Indian engineers right now in Brazil, Europe, Australia and Chennai working together on global product platforms,” he said.

Mr Hinrichs said markets such as India, China and Brazil were expanding more quickly than the more mature ones in Europe and the US which had taken quite a beating in the 2009 global slowdown.

From Ford's point of view, these new markets have price points and vehicle sizes that are both smaller than the traditional ones. In addition, fuel price and emission targets are driving Ford's efficiency towards compact cars. “A combination of all this is making us serious about smaller vehicles,” Mr Hinrichs said.

The company is now beginning to learn to compete at “these lower price points” from its engineers in the Indian subsidiary. “We then take these learnings and expand them across the rest of our portfolio worldwide,” he said.

India is, therefore, becoming increasingly important to Ford though the company has not quite managed to make much headway from the viewpoint of growing its market share.

The Figo is its first small-car priced aggressively but the long-term goals go beyond merely selling it by the thousands every month.

“It is the intelligence and capability in India which we want to take advantage of. This is what we are doing with the Ford India team and the value enabler learnings we took from the Figo have had a profound effect on our small car portfolio as anything else in the last couple of years,” Mr Hinrichs said.

As he put it, the eventual goal was about ‘One Ford' for all. In this renewed product development strategy, the same vehicles in Europe or South America would be available in Asia with some minor local modifications for weather conditions and the like.

Quite unlike General Motors and Chrysler, which were literally on the mat and had to be bailed out last year, Ford held its own amidst the global recession.

“We have grown our share in the US and Europe and we are strong in South America.

“We plan to continue that momentum and accelerate growth in Asia,” Mr Hinrichs said.

Ford, he added, felt confident about “this part of the world” and the overall corporate goal was to have a balanced portfolio across the three regions (the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific).