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  Ford intends to make India its source of B-segment vehicles like the Ford EcoSport

INDIA will be the ignition key for Ford's eight-car expansion program.

Ford will make India its small-car export springboard to global markets. The head of Ford India, country NSW-bred Michael Boneham, says growth for his company will be 60-70 per cent over the next eight years on the back of new models and a $2 billion investment in new plants.

India produces 3-million vehicles a year, most for domestic consumption, and Ford has a 4 per cent share to annually sell 120,000 cars. But by 2020 the nation's production is expected to hit 8-million vehicles with a ramp-up in exports and a string of new models.

Ford, for one, is investing $2 billion in factories - one new plant in the north-west and upgrades to its existing engine-car plant in the south-east. It is also lifting its workforce by 50 per cent at one plant, to 15,000 people. 

``By 2020, one-third of Ford's global sales will be in Asia,'' he says. 'It's currently one-sixth. India is as critical to Ford as is China or Thailand. ``But in India cars are smaller and so profit margins are equally smaller. So we have to work smarter.''

Ford only started exporting its Indian products last year. That car was the Australian-designed and engineered Figo (a five-door hatch) and sales were recorded in some adjoining Asian countries.

Ford last year added the Fiesta to its production lines at its Chennai plant in south-east India. Late this year Ford expects Figo will become swamped by its 100-plus country export program for the Fiesta-based EcoSport SUV.

``EcoSport is huge for us,'' Boneham says. ``But it's only the start. We will have eight global products by mid-decade. ``The first is the Fiesta, the second is the EcoSport and I can't tell you the rest. All are on the B-segment platform - we're not doing bigger platforms here.''

Though not qualified, Ford intends to make India its source of B-segment vehicles while Thailand will build light-commercial vehicles such as Ranger and the 2013 Everest, a Ranger-based 4WD wagon.

Larger models will come out of North and South America, with C-D segment cars - Focus to Mondeo - from Europe and the US.