Tatas to finance Fiat car purchase
Business Standard — June 19, 2006

Tata Motorfinance (TMF), the product finance subsidiary of Tata Motors, has begun disbursement of car loans to the customers of Fiat India. This is for the first time the company is financing non-Tata products.

"Tata Motors has decided to sell Fiat cars through its dealers so we have decided to finance Fiat's customers. The credit will be limited to the customers of Fiat India and will not involve its dealers," said Aubrey Rebello, chief, Tata Motorfinance.

However, there is no plan to finance vehicles of other non-Tata companies, he added.

Tata Motors dealership has started selling Fiat cars in select metros such as Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore from March.

The company will sell Fiat cars in non-metros from next year, according to informed sources. Only three Fiat dealerships across the country will sell Tata cars intially. Recently, Tata Motors sales representative underwent training at Fiat to understand the sales and servicing strategy.

The production at Fiat's Mumbai plant will be increased to 600 cars from the previous 200 cars.

Fiat's Kurla facility has remained closed after it was hit by rains last year.Fiat will produce popular Palio, Palio Adventure Sport and the Siena, at the Kurla facility.

TMF is on a rapid expansion phase. The overall vehicle financing done by Tata Motorfinance in the year 2005-06 was about Rs 5,500 crore, 60 per cent increase over Rs 3,400 crore reported last year.