"Tiger is one of Visteon's global audio platforms and is one that has been developed by the engineering team in China," says Dan Linder, general manager of Visteon Asia's electronics, interiors and lighting division.

"Visteon's approach to providing cost effective solutions has been to develop system platforms which are essentially an engineering architecture allowing audio features to be scaled to different applications," he adds.

This scalability allows Visteon's engineering team to adapt the audio system for various different OEMs. For example, a version of the Tiger system is supplied to SAIC Motor Co. for use in its Roewe brand cars.

"The Tiger platform has been sold globally to different customers: each customer has different requirements for the system's function and appearance," says Linder. "The radio we have supplied Roewe with is different to the one we have supplied for Tata—albeit based on the same platform architecture." 

For the Tata Nano version of the Tiger audio system, Visteon's China Technical Center worked with Visteon's Technical Center in the southern Indian city of Chennai. The intra-Asia work between the two centers helped save time and costs. It is also a trend developing across the auto industry as suppliers use centers across Asia to work together to develop products to meet the requirements of Asian consumers in the different markets.

For the Tata Nano, the Visteon teams in China and India developed four variants of the Tiger audio system for different target groups of Nano buyers. The most basic system offers a simple AM/FM radio system while the more sophisticated system includes a CD player, USB port and Bluetooth wireless technology.

Visteon also supplies the Nano with air intake manifolds developed by a Visteon joint venture facility in India.