Cars Designed in India

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

We are already doing plenty of this. Designing silicon chips. Designing engineering equipment. Designing auto components and accessories. Handling customer relationships and sales.
All this for some entity based in some far, far, away land.
But our cars were and still are, totally imported - design, model and variant. All vehicles from Tata's, including their Indic* variants are designed in Italy.
With fully home grown design and manufacturing, M&M's offerings along with some of the 2 and 3 wheelers, seem to be an exception.
And I should confess that I seem to like and admire most of desi designs; though I never have the occassion to buy them. (The 3 wheelers and SUVs like Bolero or Scorpio). Tata's mini trucks (*07 series), Ashok Leyland's rear engined buses, etc. do deserve special mention - for the economy and huge roar of the former, and the innovative concept of the latter.
Now, the auto design industry seems want to take a leading role.
Finance News on Yahoo! India
DC and the MD of sona Koyo do have their own interests in saying that "we are capable of doing this".
And for some reason, bid by two companies in India for the Jaguar and Land Rover brands seems to tell me that design of these two brands is likely to be moved to India - at least, the winner is likely to learn from the acquired entity.
The zillion dollar questions are - can we? And if We can, will the world buy products designed here?

[directinjection]

Originally Posted by BaCkSeAtDrIVeR

We are already doing plenty of this. Designing silicon chips. Designing engineering equipment. Designing auto components and accessories. Handling customer relationships and sales.
All this for some entity based in some far, far, away land.
But our cars were and still are, totally imported - design, model and variant. All vehicles from Tata's, including their Indic* variants are designed in Italy.
With fully home grown design and manufacturing, M&M's offerings along with some of the 2 and 3 wheelers, seem to be an exception.
And I should confess that I seem to like and admire most of desi designs; though I never have the occassion to buy them. (The 3 wheelers and SUVs like Bolero or Scorpio). Tata's mini trucks (*07 series), Ashok Leyland's rear engined buses, etc. do deserve special mention - for the economy and huge roar of the former, and the innovative concept of the latter.
Now, the auto design industry seems want to take a leading role.
Finance News on Yahoo! India
DC and the MD of sona Koyo do have their own interests in saying that "we are capable of doing this".
And for some reason, bid by two companies in India for the Jaguar and Land Rover brands seems to tell me that design of these two brands is likely to be moved to India - at least, the winner is likely to learn from the acquired entity.
The zillion dollar questions are - can we? And if We can, will the world buy products designed here?

A little off topic, but this country has traditionally produced excellent designs in areas like architecture, textiles, handicrafts, etc. However, the traditional skills have been lost or are getting lost. Take for example architecture. An average modern Indian house or building simply doesn't have the design flair the ancient ones had.

Since independence, Indian industry has been dependent on foreign designs provided by the collaborators from abroad and hasn't bothered to invest much in R&D which is a pre-requisite for producing indigenous industrial designs. As a result, post independence India doesn't have much to speak of in the field of industrial designs.

The country also hasn't invested much in this area. There are so many IITs, IIMs, NITs, but only one National Institute of Design. We need many more.

The heartening development is the realisation by MNCs that India's vast pool of engineers and technocrats can be used for undertaking R&D activity at much lower cost. Some of them have actually set up R&D facilities here. This will definitely encourage creativity in design. Also, Indian R&D facilities can be used for generating designs for foreign markets and clients as well.

Notwithstanding the fact that as of now we have nothing to speak of in the field of auto designing, now that the right environment is getting created, I'm sure we can design world class autos not merely for India but the entire world.

Cheers!

[DileepKS]

Let alone cars, pre 1991, did we have a CYCLE designed here? Not because we lacked talent, but because the companies didn't have any motivation or incentive to do that.

Presently, we do have the technical capability for designing a car ground up. What we may lack is the "artistic" part. Not because we are inferior, but because our limited exposure to the world. It is changing fast, so in a short time, that too will be got over.

[sbasak]

Traditionally, India rarely contributed with great inventions. If you go thru any General Knowledge book, 90% of all inventions come from only 3 countries - USA, Britain & Germany. Surprisingly, even Japan has not many inventions!

We are more than capable of designing cars from scratch. However, it is a risk and the question is how the manufacturer wants to take that risk?