In 2017, Mahindra and Ford signed a MoU to announce plans for the future, which involve working together. In October this year the companies announced agreements to strengthen the ongoing strategic collaboration. Future developments include Mahindra supplying Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI) compliant gasoline engines to Ford. Both companies will also work together to develop connected vehicle solutions.
In building on this association, Livemint reports, Mahindra is selling Ford cars through its dealerships in areas where Ford doesn’t operate a dealership or an existing dealer hasn’t raked in sales in plenty.
This next step also sees Mahindra dealers operating service centres for Ford cars at their dealerships. The development lets Ford leverage Mahindra’s wide reach, especially in small towns and rural areas, and as a consequence, Mahindra dealers would earn additional revenue through sales and service of Ford cars. A Ford India spokesperson says the pilot project sees select Mahindra dealers in Tier 4+ towns coming on board to sell and/or service Ford cars across 15 towns.
Ford and Mahindra will also develop a new SUV on a Mahindra platform, and a small electric vehicle. As time goes, Mahindra dealers will sell some of Ford’s future cars that are developed jointly by both automakers through their new Ford showrooms. The report mentions the collaborative sales and service pilot initiative was initiated six months ago and is planned to benefit both companies.
In recent months, Mahindra has introduced the new Marazzo and Alturas, and will soon launch S201 aka XUV300. For November 2018, Mahindra reports 16188 units sold, over 16030 units sold in November 2017 at 1 percent sales growth for passenger vehicles. Ford India’s combined domestic wholesales and exports in November registered 19,905 vehicles, compared to 27,019 vehicles in November 2017.
Ford India reported 26.32 percent cumulative sales decline at 19,905 units in November ’18, down from 27,019 units sold in November ’17. Domestic sales are down 18 percent at 6,375 units, down from 7,777 units sold in November ’17. Exports sales decline is reported at 29.38 percent at 13,530 units, down from 19,242 units exported in November 2017.
