Am I the only one who thinks it is funny that this car carries the brand “Tata?” Before you tell me to grow up, take a look at the shape of the car! I don’t think I could fit inside.
Good, it’s about time someone went after that market. We will see a lot more consumer products from india (and china obviously) in the next few decades. That is the same business model that japan used; start at the bottom of the market and underprice everyone. Everyone laughed at the first hondas in the U.S. 40 years ago, remember?
I suspect it will pick up a new name before it hits the U.S. market.
Bodacious Its not
“No va” = no go.
“Ta ta” = good bye.
I’m not certain that the Tata is my dream car. No frills does not necessarily mean that the car is easy to service. The VW Beetle of the 1960’s was a no frills car, but it wasn’t really easy to service the generator to replace the brushes. I guess if you had the equipment, it was easier to drop the engine. On the other hand, I could remove and replace the generator on my 1954 Buick in less than 15 minutes. I think engineers should design cars that are easily serviced. For example, why not have a removable plate over the fuel pump so that the gas tank doesn’t have to be dropped to replace the pump? My son had a 1989 Mercury Sable. To replace the headlight bulb, you had to remove the battery. This isn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t the smartest design. I had a 1971 Ford Maverick where it was very easy to remove the speedometer and gauge cluster to get at the wiring behind the dashboard. The same car had the oil plug on the side of the oil pan and the filter in a very easily accessed location. I could slip a pan under the drain plug and change the oil and filter without getting under the car. On the other hand, the 1947 Studebaker Champion was a pretty simple car, but the engine had to be pulled to remove the oil pan. In my humble opinion, the Checker company had the right idea. The Checkers were designed to be easily maintained. If the Tata followed the Checker model, the company might have something.
The Checker was designed as a purely commercial vehicle, sturdy and with high “maintainability”. A friend of my bought one as a family car in the 70s, when they brought out the Marathon model with some more amenities. He reported easy serviceability, cheap parts, and durable hardware. The engine and transmission were pure GM at that time; the Continetal Red Seal flat head 6 had been dropped. These vehicles easily went 1,000,000 miles with good care. Any old movie set in New York shows about half the vehicles on the street to be Checkers.
Ed Cole, when he retired from GM became president of Checkers, which was having difficulties at that time. He had a new desing on the board, when, sadly, he died in a plane crash and Checker went out of the taxi buisiness soon afterwards.
The London Taxi is the European version of a sturdy, no nonsense, run forever vehicle. At some time they were offered for sale in North America for about $40,000, the same as a C class Mercedes. It has a Perkins 4 cyl diesel, and is neither quiet or fast.
I have driven my nephews 65, restored, cherry, mustang. It rode like a buckboard, was uncomfortable, and responded like a 65. Even the less expensive models of today offer more comfort and safety. Even brake technoligy has advanced considerably in the last 10 years.
While I love old cars, I think they don’t hold a candle to what they do today.
I would love to have a throttle control too…It would do wonders for your gas mileage and might improve engine life. I used to fish with a guy that had a '69 Land Rover that had a throttle control…a great vehicle except when you had to find parts or drive on the freeway. My wife has an Expedition that under cruise control accelerates so hard on an uphill it throws you into the backseat. Totally kils your gas mileage.
Why did you sell it to buy a LaSalle?
I don’t thing new cars are garbage, but they are impossible to service at a reasonable price. The one that really kills me is the huge price tag to replace the timing belt and water pump every few years on many of the japanese and other related engines. That is a major ripoff.
Ray
You got that right! Click here:http://community.cartalk.com/posts/list/41/682412.page and see post: 1-7-'08; 10:21;05 PM; and other posts, too.
The one that really kills me is the huge price tag to replace the timing belt and water pump every few years on many of the japanese and other related engines.
The last time I got a new timing belt and water pump, it only cost me $550 for parts and labor. This work is due every 60,000 miles. Since the average car today lasts around 200,000 miles, that only comes to $1,650 through the life or car or $0.008 per mile ($0.009 per mile on average). So you are complaining about a maintenance item that costs less than a penny per mile. That’s cheap.
If you shop around a little, there are plenty of current engines with timing chains instead of belts. I agree that using a belt in that application is not the best place for them to save a few dollars on an engine. I would have to replace one every 1.5 years based on a 60K mile interval, not acceptable.
Definitly not. By and large, newer cars are a testament to “built to break”. They’re over-complicated, cheaply made, and with all those “fuel saving” modifications don’t amount to squat. I’ve got a '63 Fairlane. 221c.i. (3.6l for you metric heads), it gets 26-32mpg, and is a V-8. Granted, it’s not going to win any drag races, but it will get to where I need to go and the power is there if I need it.
What people need to learn, is these “saftey features” wouldn’t be necessary if people would just learn how to drive. Having airbags doesn’t not absolve a person from being a retard. PUT THE CELL PHONE DOWN and you won’t need that airbag.
The more components you have in a machine, the more likely something will break. There is very little that technology can do that competent driving can’t also do.
So the number of components alone makes a machine unreliable? Could you then explain why my 1998 Honda Civic is so much more reliable than my 1969 Dodge Dart? Surely the Dart had fewer components. It seems that in this example that reliability and the number of components are inversely related.
I think that reliability has more to do with the quality of the design than it does the number of components. It doesn’t matter how few components you have if they are low quality components. If all other things were equal, I would agree. In the real world, however, not all of the other factors contributing to reliability are equal.
Reliability is a function of the individual reliability and life expectancy of the components, as well as the number of components.
System Reliability, Rs= R1xR2 xR3----------x Rx, where x is the total number of interdependent components.
As you can see, if the individual R factors are all small, the resultant reliability will be poor as well. Honda allows suppliers one bad part in 344,000, so their Rx=0.999654, or 99.97%!!!
Chrysler in the 60s, however, had no real standard for parts reliability, and relied on the warranty to keep customers. I had a top of the line Dodge Dart hardtop, 273V8, automatic, power steering, HD suspension, and even though this car was above average in reliability for that year, the following things broke before the famous 50,000 miles warranty was up:
- Ignition switch
- Head gasket
- 2 universal joints on drive shaft
- Exhaust pipe bracket
- Shock absorbers
- Distributor shaft
- Front brakes
- Front ball joints
- Starter armature
- Rebuild carburetor
- Torsion bar anchor
In retrospect, comparing this to my wife’s humble little 1994 Nissan Sentra, which only had the following replaced in the first 50,000 miles:
- Front brakes
- Reglue trunk rubber trim
The Nissan actually has more moving parts than the Dart had. The Nissan had fewer maintenance visits as well.
Back in the 60s wasn’t it more common to buy a new car every couple years regardless of much anything? Now that more people are keeping their car longer than 2 years(or the car stays on the road for more than 2 years from reselling it over and over again), parts have to be more reliable. I’d still take a 69 Dart(or the 65 Chevelle I recently sold) over a new car.
What people need to learn, is these “saftey features” wouldn’t be necessary if people would just learn how to drive. Having airbags doesn’t not absolve a person from being a retard. PUT THE CELL PHONE DOWN and you won’t need that airbag.
I agree. I felt safer in the Chevelle than I do in my Civic. Not because I was surrounded by 2 tons of solid steel, but because I drove it like a 43 year old vehicle. It stopped on a dollar and said I was short changing it, couldn’t steer very well in the parking lot, was loud so people could actually hear me coming(and stare as I drive by), but also polluted more. If it wasn’t for the short leg room, it would have been the most comfortable vehicle I ever drove.
“Back in the 60s wasn’t it more common to buy a new car every couple years regardless of much anything?”
I think you have it backwards. People keep their cars longer now because they can. They actually last as long or longer than we want to keep them. I think in the 60s you had to buy a new car every couple years whether or not you wanted to.
Three major forces helped to make cars more durable. First was the federal government requirement that emission controls had to be guaranteed for 50,000 m iles. All of a sudden engines had to have stable performance, carburetors and ignition had to be more duarble, exhaust systems had to last that long, etc. Ford was heavily fined years ago for cheating on the emission tests on their mid size cars.
The second major breakthrough was the 70s “Rusty Ford” class action lawsuit filed by Canadian car crusader Phil Edmonston. This spread to the US and as a result the government required manufacturers to provide initially a 5 year rust perforation warranty on all new vehicles. Most have 7 years now and 100,000 miles or so.
The third onslaught was the discovery by the Japanese that Americans would buy quality if the price was right. This made Toyota, Nissan, and Honda rapidly improve their overall quality with the resultant better resale value. The new standards they set based on Total Quality Management, and statistical quality control, taught them by Dr. Deming, an American consultant, rapidly made Detroit look amateurish and inflexible.
Additional impetus was provided by fuel efficincy standards and safety features which increased the price of all cars. With these increases the manuafaturers had also to improve reliability to justify the higher price.
Americans have never wanted to pay extra for safety and emission compliance.
Technological improvements are now more & more originating from overseas, so we can expect the future of the automobile to be largely decided by Asian and European companies.