Quote Originally Posted by niky View Post
The business proposition is really simple. On the manufacturing end alone, you need at least 20-40k vehicles a year to make a plant cost effective. 20-40k of ONE model. That's from the perspective of the plants that stamp the body panels and build the chassis.

On e research side, you probably (because I have no exact figures for this) need a hundred thousand or so of one model to justify the engineering and development expense. The engines themselves require billions of pesos to simply develop. Given engine development costs can run into the billions of pesos, you're looking at the need to sell well in the hundreds of thousands to break even over several years of the engine's life.
That's a very low estimate for engine development. Billions of dollars go into development of a single engine family. Thing is a lot of car companies share engine technology to diffuse costs.

New factories are now designed to be quickly retooled for a group of vehicles as simply opposed to one model.

The alternative to jumpstart any auto industry is to purchase the old production line of a previous model, give it ridiculous subsidies and impose tariffs on imports. The circumstances, however, will not allow that from happening any more given free trade areas and regimes are in place.