Turkey unveils details of $3.7 billion domestic car project

Istanbul: Details of Turkey’s “domestic car” project have been revealed hours before the vehicle’s prototype is scheduled to be showcased, with the government announcing comprehensive incentives to support the endeavour.

Turkey’s Automobile Joint Venture Group Inc, or TOGG, which comprises five companies and a business umbrella organisation, will establish a factory in the manufacturing hub of Bursa, according to a presidential decree in the official gazette. The 22 billion liras ($3.7 billion) investment will enable the production of five models and a total output of 175,000 vehicles a year.

The first vehicle, a C-SUV, will be introduced in 2022, according to TOGG’s website. The group has been giving visual hints about the vehicle on its Twitter page for the past few days. The car was designed by Italy’s Pininfarina SpA, Dunya newspaper reported on December 11.

The project is expected to contribute $50 billion to the Turkish economy in the 15 years following 2022, according to Mehmet Gurcan Karakas, the chief executive officer of the consortium.

The investment will enjoy comprehensive tax cuts, free land allocation, interest rate reductions and a government purchase guarantee of 30,000 vehicles until the end of 2035, according to the decree. Investors are obliged to provide at least 3.5 billion liras in cash as capital by the end of 2023.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to drive the prototype vehicle on Friday, after the car is showcased in the northwestern town of Gebze, near Istanbul.

Erdogan first urged Turkish companies to join forces to manufacture a domestic vehicle nine years ago, saying in Jan. 2011 that he was “looking for a brave fellow, an investor for a domestic car”. More than six years after that call, a consortium, which includes Anadolu Group, BMC, Kok Group, Turkcell and Zorlu Holding, was established.

Turkey was the ninth-biggest car market in Europe as of November, according to data from the Automotive Distributors’ Association. A total of 316,427 cars were sold in the country in the first 11 months of 2019, down 26 per cent from the same period a year earlier.