Tofaş, the Fiat Group's joint venture car manufacturing company in Turkey, which has already brought to production successfully the Fiat Doblò and Fiorino vehicles, is planning to pitch for future Alfa Romeo development contracts. Photo: Alfa Romeo's newest model, the MiTo.

Tofaş, the Fiat Group's joint venture car manufacturing company in Turkey, which has already brought to production successfully the Fiat Doblò and Fiorino vehicles, is planning to pitch for future Alfa Romeo development contracts.

Tofaş (Turk Otomobil Fabrikasi AS) is Turkey's second largest auto manufacturer and is a 50-50 joint venture between the Turkish industrial conglomerate, Koç Group and Fiat Group. Koç Group, which reported US$39.5 billion in consolidated revenues in 2007 and US$10.3 billion in the first quarter of 2008, is involved in a wide range of commercial sectors including automotive, finance and durables.

With an ambitious management team, Tofaş is currently the sole global home for the production of the Doblò and Fiorino light commercial vehicles. The latter model is also built by Tofaş for PSA Peugeot-Citroën: the French firm selling them under its own brand names. Tofaş is currently developing the next-generation Doblò van, due next year, and in a first it also owns the intellectual property rights to these vehicles. Both the new Doblò and Linea have been developed through finance raised by Tofaş. It also developed the Linea (3-box sedan) for Fiat, which went into production last year in Turkey. The country is currently the sole global production hub for this vehicle, although two more global locations will start building it later this year. The Tofaş factory at Bursa in Turkey also produces a number of other cars, including two members of the 'World Car' range, the Palio (hatchback) and Siena (sedan), and exports these cars in CKD kit form to a number of other countries, including Russia.

Now Tofaş Chief Executive Officer Ali Pandir has publically stated that the company would be interested in pitching for contracts to engineer future models for Alfa Romeo if Fiat requests it to do so. "Engineering forms the eighty percent of research and development; we apply to do this. We can develop the new models of the Alfa Romeo, if Fiat wants," the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet quoted Pandir, who became Tofaş CEO when the previous boss Alfredo Altavilla took over as CEO of Fiat Powertrain Technologies, as saying.

"All automobiles produced in Turkey's Bursa province do not need to be a hundred percent production of Turkish engineers," continued Turk Pandir. "But we say we can do this. We are also in a position to design other brands of the Fiat Group. The artistic design of these brands can continue to be made in Italy. But we can develop the product in Bursa," he added.