AUTOMOBILES

Ford to make new Fiestas in Rayong

Ford Motor Co has confirmed plans to build its new Fiesta subcompact cars at its Rayong plant in Thailand next year, following the start of production of the models at its plant in Germany last week.

The Rayong plant is under construction to increase domestic production by at least 100,000 cars per year for export. In addition to the Fiesta, the first of a generation of new global small Ford cars, the subcompact Mazda 2 will be built at the plant.

Ford, in partnership with Mazda, is investing more than US$500 million to expand the Rayong plant.

The two companies plan to export the small cars to Asean, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in addition to selling them in the domestic market.

The all-new Fiesta was conceived by the European arm of Ford's global product development team to meet the expectations of customers around the world, according to Ford Motor.

It is also the blueprint for future Ford global development, bringing together Europe, the Americas and Asia. The new Fiesta will be tailored for each region and will go on sale progressively between now and 2010, starting with Europe.

The plant in Cologne, Germany is the first Ford assembly facility in the world to build the new car. It will be followed in January 2009 by another Ford plant in Valencia, Spain.

In addition to Rayong, production sites for the new Fiesta outside of Europe will be Nanjing in China and Cuautitln in Mexico. They will begin to make the cars for their respective regions from late 2008 through early 2010.

For this year, Ford plans to manufacture 148,000 new Fiestas in Cologne. When operating at full capacity, it will make more than 1,900 cars every day.

Since the very first Fiesta was launched in 1976, more than 12 million have been sold, with more than 400,000 customers in 2007 proving the enduring popularity of the model.