Maruti Suzuki to design cars from scratch

Maruti Suzuki will soon be turned into Suzuki’s small car hub and design center for small cars. In another 10 years, Maruti Suzuki India will design cars from scratch in India. To meet the deadline, Maruti Suzuki India has gone on a hiring spree and is recruiting engineers proficient in design, electrical, and mechanical engineering.

The company has already revealed that between April and July, 2008, as many as 170 engineers have been hired, taking the total strength to 570. By 2010, this number would touch 1,000, it is expected. Maruti Suzuki will also set up a state-of-the-art R&D center and test track, for which it has already applied for land to the Haryana government. Maruti says the R&D center will be on par with the facility at Suzuki, Japan.

Maruti, till recently, used to just import technology from the parent company, Suzuki Motor Corp. This helped in savings on time and funds for local R&D. When the company decided to launch Swift, SX4 and DZire, it had hired more engineers and also went in for collaborative R&D with engineers stationed in Japan. Maruti Suzuki India has said that for Maruti Swift and Maruti DZire, 30 Indian engineers worked on designing the vehicles to suit India-specific needs, such as a raised suspension for improved ground clearance but the Maruti Swift and Maruti Dzire was conceived and manufactured entirely at the Suzuki headquarters.

Maruti Suzuki is now focusing upping design and development work to meet its ambitious car launches in India. In the next few years, Maruti Suzuki will roll out models, such as the A-Star, Splash and a D-segment car christened Kizashi. Maruti Suzuki has unveiled the Maruti WagonR Duo and Maruti Omni that are fitted with LPG kits.