Ford buys a stake in the Romanian car plant at Craiova

Ford has acquired the majority stake in the car plant at Craiva in Romania. Bogdan Cierac notes that this makes Ford the second Western company after Renault to start building cars in Romania. "From 2010, Ford and Renault will be producing over 600,000 vehicles a year in Romania, most of them destined for export. That's around 1,500 cars daily. The problem is that even all these years after the revolution Romania still lacks roads suitable for the trucks that would transport the export cars to the West or the port of Constanta. Ford is therefore contemplating having the cars shipped to the West on the Danube. Moreover, the communist idea that the plant belongs to the people is still prevalent in Romania's automobile industry. Before the arrival of Renault, cars that were ready for the road used to be stolen from the production line at Pitesti. Today the Pitesti plant is the best-guarded plant in the world. No doubt it will also take the Americans a while to figure out why their vehicles are arriving in Frankfurt or Paris without wheels, car radios or car mats even though they were fitted with them at the factory."

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