Maruti Suzuki, which surpassed parent Suzuki in annual sales last fiscal, is ready to emerge as an exclusive base for small cars, by playing a pivotal role in the Japanese auto major’s global plans.

Mr. S Nakanishi, Maruti Suzuki’s MD reported, “Quality and productivity have improved manifold in Maruti Suzuki in the last few years. Let us now channelise it to the next level, where we become the exclusive base to manufacture small cars for Europe.”

Last year, Nakanishi had taken over the responsibility of the company from Jagdish Khattar and now he is hopeful that the A-Star compact will be reintroduced as Alto in Europe and would prove to be the first major model towards the end.

The announcement by the MD of Maruti comes as good news for the government which is trying to promote India as the manufacturing base for small cars, by offering advantages like lower excise duty.

Form the last quarter of this year, Suzuki would sell the A-Star which would be manufactured in India and Europe. To begin with, the company plans to export 1 lakh units and keeping only 50,000 units for the domestic market.

Nakanishi also informed, “We now want to take it to 2 lakh cars annually by 2010-11. Exports will enable the company to be at the frontier of technology, quality and manufacturing excellence.”

The company is also hopeful to strengthen its capability in developing new models from the R&D team in India. Maruti reported, “The Company has taken a decision to develop its in-house capability with the support of Suzuki. In line with this, the numbers of engineers will be scaled up to 1000 by 2010. The company will also set up an R&D centre and test track, at par with the facility at Suzuki, Japan.”