Detroit: Close on the heels of building a sports car prototype for UK-based Aston Martin, Indian automobile designer Dilip Chhabria has forged a joint venture with a Saudi Arabian firm called al Araba for producing customised luxury vehicles for the Middle East nation.

The designer has also tied up with a California-based company to make luxury cars for the US market, Chhabria said. He said talks were also on with automakers like Mazda, Hyundai, LandRover, Honda, MG Rover for designing vehicles.

"My aim is to grow this design firm and develop the size of business internationally. We have a unique position where we offer first world skills at third world costs," he said.

Chhabria's design firm called DC Design, which was set up in 1993, received popular acclaim after it built a sports car prototype called 'AMV8 Vantage Concept' for Ford Motor Company owned Aston Martin, which was unveiled at the Detroit international auto show last week.

Parts and modules of General Motors Corp (GMC) vehicles would be specially imported which would be assembled and converted into customised luxury recreational vehicles by DC Design at an assembly facility in Jeddah, the Saudi capital.

"We will soon complete making a prototype vehicle which will be displayed at the Geneva Motor Show in the first week of March," Chhabria said adding the vehicles would be badged as DC limited edition along with GMC.

The Saudi firm, al Araba, is a major distributor of GMC, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes Benz and Bentley vehicles and would hold 51 per cent stake in the new venture while the rest would be held by DC Design.

About the US project, Chhabria said the new company has been formed by ex-officials of leading automakers and would act as an "engineering service provider".

"We will design and build the prototype of the first luxury sports car in the next six weeks. Only 99 units of the first model would be produced to maintain their exclusivity," he said adding the cars would be sold at about $ 3 lakh each.

Chhabria said India was probably the eighth country in the world and second in Asia after Japan to design cars.

"About 800 concept cars are made every year worldwide. Of this, 80 to 90 per cent are designed in-house by the automobile companies while the rest are outsourced from about 30 global design firms. We are aiming to get two per cent of this business," he said.

He said India has a unique advantage as development costs in the country were one- fifth of that of developed countries.

After building the Aston Martin prototype, Chhabria hoped that DC Design would receive more projects from Prime Automotive Group which handles premier brands of Ford Motor like Volvo, Jaguar, LandRover and Aston Martin.

PTI