Iran Khodro Expands Global Reach
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran Khodro Company, the country’s largest vehicle manufacturer, continues to expand its regional and global reach. The automaker is opening a plant in Syria in April and readying a new plant in Turkey for 2009.
IKCO, as the automaker is known, is also ramping up exports as it builds a global presence outside Iran, one of the largest auto markets in the Middle East. The company builds more than half a million vehicles a year, and officials have said they want to boost annual production to more than a million vehicles and hike exports to more than 600,000 by 2016.
The Syrian plant has a modest annual capacity of 5,000 units. The Turkey plant will supply markets in Russia and central Europe. IKCO in the past two years also has begun kit assembly in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Venezuela and Argentina, with plans to add assembly in Egypt, Vietnam and China in the next year or two.
The vehicle of choice for most of these local assembly operations is the Samand, a compact sedan based heavily on the Peugeot 405 platform and priced starting at about $9,000. “Samand” is the Persian name for a local breed of horse.
Last year, the Iran government announced plans to develop a new model aimed specifically at Islamic markets in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, in cooperation with local partners in Malaysia and Turkey. With IKCO as the lead manufacturer on the project, the car is slated to begin production in 2011 and is being designed to sell for under $10,000.
What this means to you: If the U.S. government ever decides to lift sanctions on Iran, the Samand could challenge future Chinese and Indian imports at the low end of the market. — Paul Lienert, Correspondent