The World

When Tata Motors set out to build a $2,500 car, people said it couldn’t be done. This week the company will unveil its vehicle of the future.

Tata Motors is best known as a maker of industrial trucks from India’s rust belt that launched the country’s first completely indigenous passenger car, the Indica, 10 years ago. Next week the company will unveil another revolutionary new vehicle that will throw down the gauntlet in the highly competitive race to capture the first-time-buyer segment of the world’s automobile market. Tata’s not-so-secret weapon: the car is cheap. Unbelievably cheap.


Back in 2003, when chairman Ratan Tata revealed his plans to build a car that would cost less than 100,000 rupees (about $2,500 in today’s dollars), rival carmakers said it couldn’t be done. As time passed, and Tata kept at it, they hedged. Maybe it will be more like an enclosed motorcycle, they said. As tantalizing details about the car’s design leaked, they started to get worried. Finally, in April, Renault-Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn announced his own plans to build a $3,000 car in partnership with Indian motorcycle maker Bajaj Auto.

The move signaled that the race to create the world’s best-selling starter car was on. The stakes are incredibly high, which is why the international auto industry is descending in unprecedented numbers on the New Delhi Auto Expo, where Tata will reveal the design for its People’s Car for the first time on Jan. 10. The vehicle could have almost as large an impact in India as the original Volkswagen had in Germany back in 1938