After making an official exit from the three wheeler segment by stopping the production of Force Minidor, Force Motors wants to try its luck in the SUV market in India.

Force Motors (earlier Bajaj Tempo) recently announced its decision to discontinue the production of its 15-year old three-wheeler, the Minidor. The company seems to be shedding its traditional image of being a public transport carrier, and wants to make a giant leap into the passenger vehicle segment. And for beginners, Force Motors want to manufacture sports utility vehicles.

Company chairman, AN Firodia, said, “We will launch a sports utility vehicle (SUV) sometime this year. We do not have a product in this segment, but we have developed a new platform which will allow us to launch a stylish new vehicle in a segment which is very popular. We are in the rural market with the Trax, which is rural multi-utility vehicle used as a rural taxi in those states that allow it. The SUV is a completely different segment from the Trax, though”.

So far, Force Motors has had three platforms, Trump, a small commercial vehicle, the Trax a multi-utility vehicle for rural markets and the Traveller, a city coach, which are mainly targeted at the rural, multi-utility or mass transport markets. Force Motors has its manufacturing plant in Akurdi near Pune and Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh.

The company is a low profile, commercial vehicle maker, but has the capacity to make its own engines, chassis, gear boxes, axles, etc for its entire product range. You would find it interesting to note that Force Motors is the sole supplier of engines to Mercedes Benz India for its passenger cars, and makes the cab and nine-speed gear boxes for its joint venture, MAN Force Trucks.

Referring to the JV, Mr Firodia said, “We expect to sell 5,000 trucks this year, however, there are supplier constraints which is affecting us. We had intended to import the bigger TGA trucks into India as completely built units a couple of years ago but there is no market here for these trucks.

Now, the Indian SUV car segment is all poised for a mega boom. Majority of the car makers are lining up their plans of launching more and more SUVs in the country. While SUV king of India, Mahindra & Mahindra, is planning a few SUV’s in the upcoming months, and Ford is also considering to bring in compact sports utility vehicle based on the Figo.

With all these SUVs ready to storm the Indian market, the future looks very promising.