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RD AND IVECO may re components with their Ulcers working together joint development pros, from the beginning of t year.
ord of Europe chairman Jell Lutz and Iveco manig director Giorgio Gazo separately. confirmed in akfurt last week that talks ween the two manufacturare currently taking place.
:his is in addition to the .s on Ford and Fiat (Iveco's ent company) co-operation car manufacturing which disclosed at the Fiat up shareholders' meeting uly.
The talks surround the feasity of sharing some de)prnent, engineering and duction costs as well as le components.
'km decisions are expected ore the end of this year. Oreacly it is clear that there t least a measure of agree ment between the .heads of the two companies.
Lutz and Fiat Auto chairman Umberto Agnelli saw broadly similar solutions to European manufacturers' problems when they shared the platform on the first day of a Financial Times motor industry conference in Frankfurt last week.
Lutz told CM that he and many Ford Truck people believed that co-operation between his company and Iveco made "even more sense" than a similar deal on the car side.
He emphasised that the commercial vehicle co-operation talks were being kept separate from those on cars.
He also emphasised that the impetus for the talks had come largely from Ford's less senior managers. "This is not a top down exercise. The shareholders did not suggest it. The idea came up from the bottom, from the operations side," he said.
Clearly, any substantial cooperation between Ford and Iveco would have repercussions for the whole European truck manufacturing industry. Iveco is already Europe's second largest manufacturer of cvs over 3.5 tonne GVW after Daimler-Benz.
Lutz sees a "synergy" between Ford and Iveco with several areas in which both manufacturers would benefit from joint ventures of the type being discussed.
In the British 3.5 tonne plus market, for example, one of Europe's biggest, Iveco, is relatively weak while Ford is hanging on to market leadership (CM, September 7). In most of Europe Iveco does much better than Ford.
Iveco's recently introduced Turbostar models have been well received in many markets in the premium top weight tractive unit sector where Ford is weakest,