Excellent point. Perhaps a test drive would surprise me. That’s why I’m not so quick to say “never”.
True, but at under 1000 pounds, I’d be afraid to drive it in any kind of wind, and I’d cringe every time a semi blew past me.
No.
Ed B.
Actually it reminds me of the Geo Metro.
You’re asking the wrong people. We can afford something better and won’t settle for a car like this. The Nano opens the market to people that couldn’t buy a new car before and don’t mind that it’s underpowered or extremely small.
Right; they’re moving from a motorbike to their first covered, dry mode of transportation. We left that era with the Model T. Basic minicars are best sellers in the developing world.
Daihatsu, Suzuki, and others make all sorts of them, we just have never seen them here.
more reviews of the nano:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2009/mar/25/tata-nano-test-drive
tata reliability should be average. not as good as the japanese, approx equal to the german cars, considering the amount of german components the tata cars use.
The Us and Euro versions are going to be around 1600 lbs with 65 bhp engines. 4/2 doors.
If I lived where parking spaces were measured, and charged for, in inches, then yeah. Otherwise, I’ll stick with my gas hoggin SUV 
Not in a NY minute. One of the previous bare-bones, cheap Econoboxes imported into the U.S. was the Yugo.
The public was excited with the dirt cheap price but expected far more for their money than they were going to get. The excitement wore off pretty quickly when the present from new tinnyness became a burden and Yugo’s fate was pretty much sealed.
The Yugo’s were cheaply built and not very reliable. Plus, even tho they passed US crash-test requirements, they had the highest rate in fatal car crashes among other small cars also offered at the same time.
I fear the Nano is headed for the same fate. It features glued-on doors? And Tata motors is not known for reliable passenger cars. Based on their history, I’d say this was another Yugo or Hyundai Excel. I’ll bet the engineering of this car is not state-of-the-art, like some would hope.
North America is probably the most difficult area to be a car. Customers drive a lot, don’t do enough maintenance, overload their cars, and expect the machine to go forever.
This requires good design, quality materials, good assembly and good after sales service. Technical sophistication and/or very low price is not a selling point.
OK and Busted Knuckles are probably old enough to remember the futile attempts of bringing European cars to Noth America. Ford Anglia, Prefect, Consul, Zephyr, and later small Fords, like Capri, all bombed. None could handle climate extremes, tons of road salt and other punishment we hand out. And the mechanics were never properly trained to service these vehicles.
General Motors imported the Vauhall line of cars, with similar results. Chrysler owned Simca at one time and brought those little cars in. The adventures of Fiat were are well documented. The Rover 2000 and the Citroen DS19 were very sophisticated, but bombed because of poor qquality and were not adapted to our climate.
Those foreign cars that succeeded followed a plan; Volkswagen built a simple, rugged car and established a well trained dealership network with a one year’s supply of parts as a contract condition. The car was also easy to fix.
Volvos succeeded because they came from a cold country, and were well built (the early ones anyway), and could handle any North American driving style.
If the above appears to be generalizing, it points to the fact that manufacturers who ignore these basic tenets won’t succeed. The early Honda Civics were not very good cars, but Honda learned very quickly, and constantly improved the breed. Similar with Nissan and Toyota.
By early to mid-eighties Japanese quality and durability passed that of the US.
To be successful in North America now requires a massive commitment, and Tata has to decide whether to flood the developing world first with inexpensive cars, or to direct very significant quality, testing, market research resources to being successful here. They might do well to study Hyundai’s and Kia’s example.
I wish them well, but we are now shopping for a new car for my wife. Would I buy a Nano? Not in your wildest dreams, but a stripped Hyunda Accent would meet all her needs.
I wouldn’t recommend driving it more than 50 miles from a servicing dealership.
What special tools do these vehicles require?
How many mechanics have been schooled on these vehicles?
Do the local parts stores have an adequate inventory of parts for these vehicles?
Good points! Germany may be the world’s most sophisticated car market, but North America is by far the most DEMANDING.
I see that most people on here, are not aware of tata as a company and as a brand, thus making it very tough for tata to come into the US market. If I were to ask myself this question, I would say yes, that I would buy a tata nano as a small, second city car to get groceries etc. I would never take it on the freeway, but as I have personally owned tata products, and have been happy with what they sell, I would buy it.
Tata is a pretty solid engineering company. And as India is graduating so many, reasonably good quality engineers, annually, I would trust their products, and more so in the future.
Demography seems to be destiny. The race of the future is to recruit the best talent to get goods and services to the worlds masses at a reasonable price. You need the people . Geographical location is going to be mattering lesser and lesser.
If I lived in Europe I might buy one, especially in some cities and towns with narrow streets. Europe has always had some very small cars on their streets.
In America a car we consider small can be a large car in Europe. I wouldn’t buy one where I live now, rural PA. If I lived in a large city, like NYC and I just wanted a car for city driving and parkng I might consider a Nano, but I don’t think I’d buy one. At least is sounds like it gets good mpg, while the Smart Car is tiny and get less mpg than my '03 Civic.
If a car is going to be so small that it has questionable safety, then it has to have big benefit in super high mpg before I’d consider it.
If I were the sort of person to buy a new car (I’m not), sure. I live in a very congested city (location of the Cartalk made famous Nissenbaums) and mostly use car sharing services to get around, but if I needed a car and wanted a new one, yeah, why not? It’s no smaller than a lot of cars were in the 80’s and early 90’s, and frankly, I rather liked those little buggers.
I would have to test drive one to answer, but I would consider it. Right now, my only commuting vehicle is a motorcycle, and something like this would be good for days when it rains.
Not having air conditioning would not be good, but right now, my Civic doesn’t have it either, and my long term goal is to be a snow bird.
Something like this would be perfect for pulling behind an RV. Once you get where you are going in an RV, all you really need is a small vehicle to take you on grocery runs and to local attractions.
Agree Houstonrice; Tata is well positioned to become a world class car company. However, to get a product to fit a market segment needs in-depth knowledge of what is required, and then one has to spend the resources to upgrade that product to suit. This is even true for home appliances; the worst one ( a dishwasher) on the market for reliability is made in… Sweden!
Agree that the Nano has a better chance than the Yugo, Lada, Renault, and other orphans had.
The currrent version of the “Euro Nano” would sell as a town runabout, or one for students, or shopping vehicle for retired people. There will also be buyers who want to be seen as green, such as Smart Car owners. In all cases, the owner has the option to take public transit in case of a breakdown.
By now you will have learned that successful car marketing needs, among things: 1)product, 2)distribution organization, 3)trained mechanics, 4)and quick parts availability at reasonable prices. I illustrated the original Volkswagen Beetle’s fast penetration of the US market. It had all those while other foreign makers at that time had only one or none of these.
Just like BLE said about weight and horsepower, when you think about how wind affects a vehicle, you should also consider the vehicle’s aerodynamics. If a vehicle is aerodynamic enough, weight isn’t as important.
More information on TATA and the Nano:
TATA group: 70 billion USD , 350,000 employees.
TATA motors; 20 billion USD sales.
“world’s fourth largest truck manufacturer, and the world’s second largest bus manufacturer with over 24,000 employees.”