![]() | #286 |
Senior - BHPian ![]() | ![]() ^^^ Even the 4sp carb version could do it. But of course it required quite a distance to reach that and back then knowing the speedo error was not possible. |
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![]() | #287 | |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() Dr. Pawan Goenka's first car was a Mustang ![]() ![]() Quote:
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![]() | #288 | ||
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() Interesting trivia from the Tata Indica book (horrible book, don't buy it). In the chapter covering the design of the Indica, Rajhans (Tata Designer) says: Quote:
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![]() | #289 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Hyped Village
Posts: 594
Thanked: 1,284 Times
| ![]() An interesting article from Popular Mechanics. May be something similar can be compiled from the Indian automotive gems. ![]() 12 of the Most Embarrassing Cars Built by Otherwise Excellent Automakers - These cars were the black sheep of their automotive families. http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars...tive-families/ Request to Mods : Could't find a trivia thread for the International Car Scene, so posting here. You can move this to a more suitable thread. |
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![]() | #290 | |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() Bet you never knew why James May was fired from Autocar. This is hilarious ![]() ![]() Link to full article Quote:
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Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() For nostalgia fans, I found a couple of articles from the 80s. Gives a great insight into how the market was then, including customer perceptions & preferences. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 Some notable excerpts: The 118NE had 75,000 bookings! Quote:
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![]() | #292 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() In all these F1 discussions, remembered something I'd seen on SpeedTV (yes, there was a channel dedicated to cars in the USA). So, at a regular meeting with the Ford family, Jacques Nasser (then boss of Ford Motor Company) was asked a question by one of the family members. IIRC, it was a lady. 'Jacques, who is the highest paid employee of Ford'? Jacques replied saying that it was he himself, and probably wondered why this question came up. Pat came the followup question 'No, it's someone named Eddie Irvine....who is this????' ![]() ![]() Irvine was then driving for the Jaguar F1 team. Just so you know, no one really watched F1 in the USA. |
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![]() | #293 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() Picking up a lot of trivia & history from BVR Subbu's new book: - The government offered a chance to Tata Motors to build a small car in the 60s - that didn't work out. - At the time that Hyundai India was being set up, Hyundai HQ decided to move manufacturing out of Canada. All the high value stuff (including the stamping press) was shipped down from Canada to India, saving Hyundai India big bucks. - In the mid-nineties, Tata & Mercedes were exploring developing a compact car together. |
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![]() | #294 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() Here's another incredibly interesting bit of trivia from the same book. The hotly anticipated Indica was just around the corner, as was the Daewoo Matiz. Hyundai didn't want to let the competition know whether they are going to launch the Accent first or the Santro. So, they simply told vendors to start preparations for both cars (OEM suppliers are known to leak info to competitors - even we get a lot of scoops from them). As we all know, it was the Santro that was launched first. |
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![]() | #295 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Jan 2015 Location: By the tracks
Posts: 126
Thanked: 347 Times
| ![]() @GTO sir SPOILER ALERT!!! , interesting facts about Tata being offered the chance to build a car by the Government of India If that had materialized, maybe the Nano may have come out much earlier. |
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![]() | #296 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() One more interesting bit of trivia. When Ford arrived in India, it received 5,000 applications for the 15 dealerships it wanted to set up ![]() In comparison, poor then-unknown Hyundai received merely 200 applications for the 75 dealerships it wanted ![]() |
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![]() | #297 |
BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2016 Location: HR 05, GJ 06
Posts: 97
Thanked: 181 Times
| ![]() once we filled the tank upto the brim in my friend's pulsar and it was a horrible experience. It wobbled very badly. It was difficult to ride, difficult to stop and very very difficult to handle on turns. It was like driving a fully loaded truck. ![]() I think that was the reason behind downsizing of the fuel tank. |
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Senior - BHPian ![]() Join Date: Feb 2017 Location: KA - IND
Posts: 1,082
Thanked: 3,650 Times
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![]() | #299 |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() An interesting bit of trivia from the book 'Men of Steel' by Vir Sanghvi. In the late 80s & early 90s, Citibank had cornered a big share of the new car financing market. Uday Kotak wanted to crack that. Solution = they simply bought a lot of new cars on which they would offer 'instant delivery' if you took finance from them. In those days, the popular cars had waiting periods. Eventually, I believe, everyone else adopted the practice. |
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![]() | #300 | |
Team-BHP Support ![]() ![]() | ![]() You can drive a Mercedes Benz in India, but the Mercedes CEO cannot ![]() ![]() Quote:
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