Mumbai, India—the sprawling backdrop of Slumdog Millionaire and the site of the launch of the planet’s cheapest car—was close to Nano hysteria. You couldn’t open a newspaper or turn on a radio or TV without seeing the Tata Nano’s arced silhouette. It was called the “most awaited car in the world.”
But is America ready for a spacious yet tiny, four-door, four-seat car with a sub-1.0-liter engine imported from India? Ratan Tata, 71, the chairman of the industrial conglomerate that bears his name, the Tata Group, thinks the Nano will be the right car for the times when a U.S. version is ready in 2012.
For now, the Nano is the new Indian “people’s car,” the 21st-century equivalent of the Ford Model T or the Volkswagen Beetle. It is intended to get millions of Indians off their motorbikes (which often carry a family of four) and onto the relative safety of four wheels.
It is a tall car, just 122.0 inches long, with no frills, a minimum of equipment, and a 35-hp, 624cc two-cylinder engine mounted under and behind the rear seat. Ratan Tata shocked the world six years ago when he said it would be a “proper car” with a base price of “one lakh rupees” (a lakh is 100,000, and one lakh rupees is about $2000). If Tata could do it for that price—most of the auto industry was skeptical—it would be, by far, the cheapest new car in the world.
When the Nano goes on sale in July, Tata confirms that it will be wearing a $2200 price tag despite cost increases of steel and other commodities and the need to move and start again with the Nano factory after the original site in Singur, West Bengal, was taken over by displaced farmers and Marxist activists. Even though the plant was 90 percent complete, Tata abandoned the Singur factory and began building a new plant in Gujarat that is due to open next spring. Until the Gujarat plant is complete, production of the Nano has moved to the Tata truck plant at Pantnagar in northern India.
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