Pune: Fiat rolled out its first offering, the Palio Stile (pronounced Stee-lay) from its new plant at Ranjangaon inaugurated here. The commercial launch of the car would be held in Mumbai on April 4.

The project involves setting up of a paint shop in November this year and a manufacturing facility for 2,00,000 engines and transmissions to be used by the Tatas as well as Fiat cars by next year. A second step for manufacture of Fiat''s Grande Punto and the Linea here has been scheduled for the middle of 2008.

The project, a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Motors and the Fiat Group, involves an investment of 660 million over the next five years, with 470 million, including 250 million for the car plant, being planned for the first stage. The investment in the project to date has been Rs 300 crore. The hitherto un-named joint venture is expected to get a new name once the investment from the Tata group begins to roll in later this year.

The new plant will have a total installed capacity of manufacturing 1,00,000 cars annually for both domestic and export markets. In addition to Fiat models, it will produce a number of new generation cars from Tata Motors by the middle of next year.

The restructured Palio Stile outfitted with a 1.1 litre engine presently has 70 per cent local content, to be enhanced significantly once the engine plant gets operational. The current production of 30 cars per day will be marketed through the present network of 63 Tata-Fiat joint dealerships.