Cars Designed in India 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? |