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MOTORINDIA
l May 2012
moment of pride for Ashok Leyland.
We are entering Turkey for the long
term and are happy to take initial
steps to enter the European market.
We have 11 partners all over the
world making local bodies on our
chassis and are proud to work with
an excellent partner here, Utikar.
We welcome more partners in Tur-
key both for bus body-building and
building special structures on our
truck chassis”.
Ashok Leyland will strongly lev-
erage technology, manufacturing
capabilities and skilled labor of its
local partners and offer customers
well-designed, best-in-class trans-
portation solutions. Due its geos-
trategic importance, Turkey will
become the company’s distribution
base to reach markets like Turkmen-
istan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Algeria,
Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and the
Middle East. These operations will
complement bus supplies from the
company’s manufacturing facility at
Ras Al Khaimah. In addition, AVIA
Ashok Leyland Motors very well
represents the company in Europe
by making and marketing the popu-
lar D-Line series of trucks.
The buses which were presented
at the Turkey show are built on the
816 chassis which is eight metre
long, fitted with a 160 hp engine.
The engine is Euro 4 compatible and
will soon be available in Euro 5 and
Euro 6 versions.
Going forward, the company has
plans to produce 6-metre, 7.8-metre
and 11-metre bus chassis both for
inter-city and intra-city applications
and will also develop rear engine
buses in partnership with Utikar.
Apart from bus chassis, Ashok Ley-
land will also export truck 9 tonne,
16 tonne and 25 tonne chassis lo-
cally built in Turkey. The trucks will
cater to the growing demand for mu-
nicipal application vehicles. Ashok
Leyland also plans to set up a branch
office in Turkey to streamline opera-
tions there.
Mr. Nillson also gave an update
on Ashok Leyland’s Optare project.
The company plans to export Optare
vehicles to Poland, Denmark, Swe-
den, Germany and a few other mar-