Making of Tata’s nano car

In early 2003, five engineers from Tata Motors trooped into the main conference room at Bombay House, the Victorian sandstone building that houses the headquarters of the Tata Group. They had been summoned at a day’s notice from the Tata Motors factory in Pune by company Chairman Ratan N. Tata, who had just made a promise the world said would be ‘impossible’ to keep.

Tata had told a Financial Times correspondent on the sidelines of the Geneva Auto Show that he was thinking of making a car that would cost about € 2,000. Adjusted against the then exchange rate of the rupee, that translated to Rs 1 lakh. Tata says he had never really defined the project in his head exclusively by its pricing. “It was the media that said it,” says Tata. “But we decided to accept the challenge….” With that resolution, Tata imprisoned himself and his engineers in a promise to fulfil which they would have to all but rewrite the principles of automotive engineering.

see Cover story on Tata nano making

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