The Ford Puma, the UK’s best-selling car last year, has survived as the brand’s only small car for one good reason: it’s built in the cost-effective eastern European country of Romania.
But while lower wages help keep the Puma both cheap enough to attract buyers and profitable enough not to consign it to the same fate as the Fiesta or Focus, Romania is a hard grind compared to production in Germany.
The factory in the south-eastern city of Craiova wasn’t originally Ford’s. It started in 1976 as a joint venture between the communist government and Citroën to build Oltcit versions of the Visa, running quirky air-cooled boxer engines.
Following the collapse of the Ceausescu regime, Daewoo bought the plant in 1994 and built the Matiz and other models there until finances ran out.
When General Motors bought the rump of the Korean company in 2002, it decided it didn’t want Craiova, so it sat idle until 2008, when Ford took it over.
Ford first built the Transit Connect, then the B-Max and Ecosport there, but it wasn’t until the smash-hit Puma entered production that the Craiova really found its stride – perhaps for first time ever.
Last year, it made around 250,000 examples of the Puma and related Transit/Tourneo Courier – a record for the plant. The UK is Craiova’s largest single export destination.
Now the factory has just started building electric versions of both models, finally giving Ford a lower-priced EV to help it comply with the UK's ZEV mandate.
One reason GM might not have wanted Craiova is the awkward location and poor infrastructure. Like much of southern Romania, the city is blocked off from the rest of Europe by the Southern Carpathian mountain range, which is short of decent road passes. Some, like the snaking Transfăgărăsan - made famous by a Top Gear episode - are shut during winter.
Even the fertile flatlands linking Pitesti (stop-off to the mountains and home of Dacia Duster production) and Craiova 75 miles to the west lacked decent roads, with average speeds of around 40mph, due to Romania’s endemic traffic jams.
Getting parts in and cars out is tough work in these conditions, which is why Ford has waged a long and persistent campaign to get the Romanian government to fund roads up to the tasking of shipping Pumas, starting with the Craiova-Pitesti section.
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