Nigerian Made Car

I've always wondered why there is no Nigerian car yet and you have nigerians working for all other international carmakers.

So lets reignite the topic of a Nigerian car, remember the 1997 Z600 by Dr. Ezekiel Izuogu? I remember at that time it was all over the news. That car never came to fruition and Other african countries like South africa and Senegal are just begining to show interest in it.


Izuogu's 90% local content nigerian made car prototype.

What if Nigeria had a national car, , what would it be? thats why I've started the blog naijacar to research ways it can be it can be done. I personally am an amateur car designer and believe strongly in nigerian talent, my portfolio  is at cardesignnews

The first thing that comes to mind is that a nigerian car should be cheap for the masses, much like what the 1903 Ford model T was to USA. we could learn from the renault engineered dacia logan http://renault-logan.eastrolog.com/



the sri-lankan micro car http://www.globalautoindex.com/maker.plt?no=2309&g=Micro


Many other developing nations are leaving nigeria behind in the car maufacturing sector, its high time we show what we can do.

Wasn't there are car in the late 80s to early 90s made by some guys in the former Anambra state area?  If my memory serves me right, the name was anamco.  In the end, it went the way of all government projects unfortunately.

Bottomline, we can and should make a car.  The problem is those who would probably be better placed in terms of resources have mostly left the country leaving those who have no motivation/resources/encouragement behind due to the economic conditions.

Sad, but true, at least in my opinion.

forget cars,

have we made bicycles? all the Zhiang, Zhiang motorcycles that are everywhere, are they not just assemblies of Taiwanese Parts. Do you mean Nigerians are not intelligent enough to do something local, which would be more cheaper?

Its like this: as of now, what Nigeria knows how to do is to pour amala pouder inside diabetes-Capsules and sell them as diabetes drugs, and we end up killing ourselves.  Thank God for NAFDAC

thats why there is no Nigerian made car. If Nigeria makes its own car, it will just catch fire.

Regarding AMAMCO, they are still fabricating busses powered by mercedes diesel engines albiet in small numbers. Peugeot Association of Nigeria (PAN) is currently the only assembler of paasenger cars. Their business model still bogles my mind, because a brand new 504 is 2 million naira. Now who in their right mind would spend that much money for such an archaic design( aprt from the government officials), when a more modern imported kia or hyundai costs a lot less.

PAN and ANAMCO are partly government owned. there in lies the issue. government owned car companies are always slugish because every worker goes there to make money for himself like you said my2cents. Not only nigeria, but other countries suffer the same reality, Proton of malaysia is the best example. Only in China do government owned carmakers perform well because of the unique internal competitive environment china creates.

We DON'T NEED any government backing to make this happen. read the short history of the sri-lankan car and notice it took just two years to go from prototype to sales, although they had a little government support, that is pretty quick. Izuogu's 1st prototype was completed in 1997 and no sales yet 9 years later.
I would sincerely like to say that Izuogu's car is not necesarily what we have to follow, its just a refrence point. The design  has aged so much that even if it enters production people today would not accept it as much as they would 9 years ago.

Lets take a page from the entrepreneurs in the Nigerian movie sector, those folks never waited for the government. they just did what they had to do.

I've moved my forum from naijar(dot)blogspot(dot)com to naijaCar.proboards99.com

The car maker my 2 cents talked about is Eddy Bongos.  He was doing assembly on a small scale. His vehicles  were mainly pickups and buses and I still see some of them today. 
To date it has been the most commercially viable attempt at vehicle manufacturing in Nigeria. The vehicles looked like Isuzu,Toyota, Nissan and Mazda all together. Most key components were imported while the body parts were done in house. I spoke with some of his old workers  not too long ago.
I am very much interested in the auto industry. we can't really make much head way without it.
Substantial efforts have  been made by a government organ called CADD( ABU, Proda, Addis Engineering, Kwaratech Etc). CADD stands for Centre for Automotive Design and development. CADD was scraped by OBJ govt due to bad advice from his advisers.

I like Naijadey's enthusiasm and I will like to join forces with him

Now I'm thinking of following the blueprint of TATA motors $2,200 "Indian peoples car"  which would be assembled on site at the dealerships. Complete kits would be manufactured at one factory, then components shipped to dealerships where they would be assembled on demand. At first I doubted such a scheme would work, but after thorough review of the concept, it began to make sense. It would avoid the huge overhead costs for factory equipment and transportation cost, as it is easier transporting stacked car parts than a fully assembled car. This method is very similar to what the Swedish retail giant IKEA does.

heres a link to the progress of the TATA project  http://www.dancewithshadows.com/one_lakh_car.asp

hers a draft of the early technical specs and layout the press release is below that


This is what Nigeria Should be doing

I am fully aware of that, that does not mean the guy is dead. We can still join our efforts to make his dream a reality.

So the project aint dead

that a true talk Nigeria should try to make their own car instead of doing it for other country , that my opinion

Nice idea.Have we produced any?

lmao


Please support d guy people

Well

To all that show some interest in this idea, thanks. To those who refuse to understand, so be it.
I have not kept up with my blog lately because motivation was lost for  a while and other things took up my time. naijacar was created to raise interest and awareness for the nigerian public on building a car.

There is no reason why Nigeria should not be building her own cars today. Like has been stated in my first post, other countries have had successes with their own locally developed cars. Nigeria should not be left behind. I will begin updating the blog with news and developments in the Nigerian industry and the progress of naijacar. 

Thanks nazzyon   I haven't lost hope at all. This idea is one of my biggest passion and once that s there hope cannot be taken away.

By the way I have a hard time finding what is going on in the parts manufacturing sector of Nnewi and Aba. It would be nice to get a lead that knows what goes on in these areas as well as the steel and aluminum industry. sharing that informing is greatly appreciated and highly needed.

In terms of conceptualization. I've come a long way. details would be posted on my blog next week, but thats just conceptualization. The real test is to execute this in the nigerian environment, something that is a little out of my way now that I am not in Nigeria. Thats why I wanted to raise interest so people could just see the possibilities that are usually hard to visualize.

this will be great if it eventually comes to pass. the masses in Nigeria will have hope of owning their own brand new cars. I recently visited a country in Asia ( a fellow economic south country!!!!!), at a point it seemed like cars were being rolled out of the factory. I dream of the day that we'll have less "tokunbo" on our roads. Keep us posted with progress reports. I wish you and all other Nigerian inventors favour (in the site of govt. and big-time investors) and progress