Nanjing Fiat Automobile Co Ltd - who earlier this week announced a significant rise in sales last year - has also outlined its current plans for future model development in China. Nanjing Fiat Automobile Co Ltd, is a Chinese-based 50-50 joint venture between Fiat SpA and the Nanjing Automobile Group, itself owned by the rapidly-expanding Yuejin Motor (Group) Corporation, which also has a burgeoning joint venture with the Fiat Group's Iveco trucks and buses division.

Production of Fiat cars by Nanjing Fiat at the Jiangsu factory in Eastern China began almost four years ago, firstly with the Palio hatchback model, and it has been a steep learning curve for the joint venture, with ambitious plans slowing up as production totals remained limited. Manufacturing to date has mainly focused around Fiat's 'World Car' range, a group of platform sharing, low-cost, effective cars which are currently built in developing countries including Brazil, South Africa and India.

The Palio was swiftly joined on sale in China by the Siena (saloon) and the Palio Weekend (estate), all three based around the same architecture. Joining them on the Jiangsu production lines is another low unit cost vehicle from Fiat Auto, the Doblò, which is also built by another Fiat joint venture, Tofas, in Turkey.
 

Earlier this week Nanjing Fiat announced a 37 pct rise in sales year-on-year, while yesterday they outlined a fresh research and development strategy aimed at taking the company forward.  The main plank of this strategy will be to offer the Chinese market a larger mid-size sedan (codenamed 311), based around the Siena model, which will offer improvements in quality and finish levels. Nanjing Fiat wish to address concerns that Chinese car buyers favour sedans larger in size than the Siena, and that its visual appearance also needs to be enhanced. It has been revealed that they have now developed eight prototypes which have been shipped to Fiat's laboratories in Italy for examination and testing.

At the same time a locally-built engine will be sourced for the Doblo to reduce this model's production costs. Nanjing Fiat has also considered building the Stilo model in China but it is believed to have now discarded this idea.