M&M managing director Anand Mahindra told The Financial Express: "Ford has shown interest to distribute the Scorpio in the overseas markets, although we have not yet reached a final understanding with them in this regard."

The company has received key inputs from Ford engineers for the Scorpio project, which, according to Mahindra, will be the next generation platform for rolling out an exhaustive range of utility vehicles.

If the arrangement works out, M&M will become the first local automaker to work out a strategic marketing alliance with an international major. While Telco is considering such a long-term strategy, it is yet to identify the marketing partner.

M&M has along-standing relationship with Ford and it played a crucial role in the formation of Ford India, when it picked up a 50 per cent stake in it. M&M is now a minority partner in Ford India following its decision to abstain from pumping in additional funds. Ford presently has a representative on the M&M board.

The company is investing around Rs 600 crore on Project Scorpio, which will be positioned to take on top-of-the-line utility vehicles like the Kijang of Toyota. Although no final decision has yet been taken on whether the project will be located at Nashik or Zaheerabad, company officials are confident that the Scorpio will hit the roads by the mid-2001.

The automobile industry, which has been in a constant state of flux throughout the 1990s, is now ready to venture into uncharted waters. Especially, since the age of the individual automobile is creeping back into the global automotive scene, the conceptualisation and implementation of the `Production Platform' technology has become the order of theday. Car manufacturers will soon have four or five different chassis and a higher number of car styles being built on the same production platform. "Scorpio is not a vehicle, it is our next generation platform," Mahindra says.

Unlike the passenger-car market where over a dozen players are fighting it out for driving space, the MUV market has only a few players. Although the size of the market is barely one-fourth of the passenger-car segment, it is expected to grow by over 15 per cent annually in the coming years. That is precisely the reason why international car makers have started to take this market seriously.

Japanese giant Toyota Motors, which has tied up with the Kirloskars, is launching the Kijang next year, while Mitsubishi has teamed up with Hindustan Motors for the production of the Lancer. M&M hopes to capitalise on its extensive rural distribution network which the international players will find hard to emulate. The company possibly has the largest rural market database which will come handyin the coming years. The company already offers a vast range of utility vehicles -- Commander, Marshal, Classic, Armada -- in almost every segment of the market with prices varying from Rs 3.25 lakh to Rs 6.25 lakh. The product portfolio will be enriched further with the launch of the Scorpio, which will come in quite a few variants.