Which One Is Better: Car Manufacturing or Part Manufacturing?

Khodrocar - If you look at the rankings of the world's most powerful automakers and part manufacturers, you will see these name for sure: United States, Germany, Italy and Japan. These countries have powerful carmakers and part manufacturers in order to be completely self-sufficient. Meanwhile there are few exceptions which by their vehicle part from other countries but the point is that the countries like Turkey and Brazil are very active in the field of producing parts instead of cars. However many models of Volkswagen is being produced in Brazil but the main their main concern is to produce parts.

Iran is active in the automotive industry for more than half a century, but some experts believe that car manufacturing in Iran just include assembly and it was better to be concentrated on producing vehicle parts.

Bahram Shahriari, an automotive industry expert tells Khodrocar regarding their issue: "Carmakers can’t live without part manufacturers but opposite is possible. The fact that the part manufacturers of countries like Turkey, Finland and Austria is better than us is that they interact with the world, but we don’t.”

He says: "Iran tried to export its parts to the other countries but the sanctions did not allow them. However, Turkey’s economy was announced "open” in the year 1994 and that was the start point for them. 12 carmakers came to Turkey and invested from one to 100 percent in this country. Eight years later they started to export. Exactly, the thing that we do not have in Iran.

Shahriari emphasizes: "Our vehicle part is usable for domestic cars. We can say that we are lagging behind in development and we have not grown well in terms of quality.”
The expert believes that there is the ability and potential for part manufacturers growth in Iran.

He answers the question about the concentration of Iran on part manufacturing more than car manufacturing: "Automotive industry is strategic because it has many related industries and job creation. I believe If our car industry was not monopolized by the government, it would have had a good deal of growth and interaction.”

He continues: "Because the industrial development plan of our country has not been specifically designed for any of these industries, and in spite of the general impression, no support has been given, neither automotive nor part manufacturing industry did not have a significant improvements.”

Khodrocar – Considering Iran’s huge market and geographical location, being a car manufacturer and part manufacturer at the same time is not bad, if they have ideal conditions. However, these days none of these two have an ideal situation. Sanctions and exit of foreign investors will make the situation worse and these industries will soon face a crisis.


Khodrocar Reporter: Sepideh Ghazinezhad
Khodrocar Translator: Maziyar Jafarieh