India to Become Rolls Royce's Top Market in 5 to 10 Years

Rolls Royce, the British luxury car manufacturer, thinks India has a great potential in the auto sector, and expects the country to become the top market in the next 5 to 10 years. Rolls will use the Indian supplier network belonging to BMW to get parts for its models, gasgoo.com write citing a report by Economic Times.

"We believe India will be the single most important market for Rolls Royce in the next 5-10 years," said Tom Purves, the chief executive of the company. "We're open-minded, and being within the BMW group network, we have access to all the purchasing power the group has and engineering opportunity that exists."

Purves explained that both India and China are growing when referring to the automotive sectors, with the economic recession having only a slight impact over the local sales.

But Rolls Royce already announced its optimistic plans for next year. Through the voice of its director of sales and marketing, Graeme Grieve, Rolls announced that the company could even triple its sales, partially thanks to the new Ghost model which is expected to arrive on the market in early 2010.

"A car like this is pocket change," Grieve said. "Most of our customers will have something on their wrist that's more expensive than this. The great advantage with us in our market is that no one has really gone anywhere, no one has lost their job. If you're worth $1.5 billion instead of $3 billion you still go out for a meal and you still buy a car."

Rolls sold a total of 1,212 cars worldwide last year, which represents the best sales in 18 years for the brand.