Fiat to move production of Lancia Ypsilon to Tychy

The Fiat factory in Tychy (Slaskie voivodship) will later this year start the production of Lancia Ypsilon, the Italian car maker’s premium supermini, AutomotiveSuppliers.pl, a consultancy firm, reported. Test assembly of the vehicles is to begin in November and serial production is scheduled to start in February 2011.

The car is currently produced by a Fiat factory in Sicily, but in early February the company decided to close the loss-making facility and move the operations elsewhere. As part of the reorganisation, Fiat reportedly aims to relocate the production of Fiat Panda, its popular city car, from Tychy to Naples, bowing to political pressure to increase production at home.

If confirmed, the net effect of the changes might well be negative for the Tychy plant, given that Lancia Ypsilon is much less popular than the Panda. In 2009, the latter car accounted for roughly 50% of the factory’s annual output of about 600,000 vehicles.

At the moment, annual production of the Tychy plant is almost equal to the output of all of Fiat’s Italian factories combined.