Mahindra-Renault's Logan on streets in Feb

Mahindra-Renault, a 51:49 joint venture between the automobile group Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) and French car-maker Renault, would launch the mid-sized sedan car Logan for the domestic market by the second week of February 2007. Its Logan car plant at Nashik will start commercial operations in the first week of January 2007.

Mahindra-Renault has set up its Logan car plant adjacent to M&M's state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Nashik. The total investment in the project is around Rs 600 crore. The company has done the final testing of vehicles for making drive vehicles.

It has already started making 3 to 5 vehicles daily and almost 200 vehicles have been made so far, company sources said.

Initially, it will manufacture 90 vehicles daily and then increase the number of vehicles gradually. The company has set the target of manufacturing 50,000 units of right hand drive (RHD) entry-level C segment car- "Logan' in the first year. The Logan will share stamping division and paint shop of M&M's Scorpio plant.

About almost half of the partsomponents of the Logan car will come from Europe, while it will source the rest (50 per cent) from 35 vendors across India, including 10 vendors from Nashik. Lear Corporation, JBM Auto, Sharda Motors and Reliable Group are among the major vendors of Mahindra-Renault.

Currently, M&M is manufacturing Scorpio and Bolero utility vehicles at its Nashik facility with manufacturing capacity of 330 units per day. M&M has also said that it would make the Ingenio vehicle in Nashik from 2008 and the work for that has also begun.

The company is building a new body shop (for Ingenio) adjacent to its existing facility at Nashik.