Hungary's automotive industry has received major investment from Suzuki and Germany's Gedia Group to boost car production over the next two years.

Falling car sales over the past few years have been cause for concern in Hungary. Last year Suzuki sold a total of 32,639 cars, a drop of 16.6% from 2005. Ford were the only company not to register a slump sales in 2006, achieving an increase of 9.4%.

As a result of the Ft40m (£104,000) investment from Suzuki, its Esztergom plant is to increase its capacity from 200,000 to 300,000 units by 2008. Production is now set to begin on Suzuki’s upgraded SX4 model.

Hungary's Suzuki and Audi will also benefit from the new supply plant in Tata financed by Germany’s Gedia Group, global manufacturers of pressing and welded assemblies for the automotive industry. The 190million euro plant will produce 8,000 tires per annum from 2009.

Audi Hungaria has already announced a year-on-year production increase of 12% at its Gyôr facility, which registered production of 1.89 million engines in 2006, of which 23,669 were Audi TTs. The Audi A3 Cabrio model will be introduced in 2008. Although Hungary’s automotive industry is still far from stable, these investments provide an encouraging start to 2007.