[chncar]

Originally Posted by cooldude1988765

I don't know why the Europeans follow Clarkson so much. I think he speaks utter non sense most of the time. ( No offence meant to fans of topgear and clarkson; these are just my views)

You are absolutely right there, he is more of a comedian than anything else. He is basically a comedian with an enthusiasm for cars, not a serious motoring journalist or analyst. If you see the BBC site they have regular comedy/entertainment type articles by him, which poke fun at various countries and have nothing to do with cars.

Having said that, lots of other reviewers panned the City Rover as well. I would say that was mostly Rover's fault in positioning the car and not modifying it to suit the market. Tata Indica does not pretend to be something it is not, the City Rover did.

Ironically Tata now owns the Rover brand. The Chinese co that bought MG Rover doesnt have the rights to the name so in typical Chinese fashion labelled their Rover 75 knockoff as Roewe 75

[silver_shadow]

Originally Posted by sanjayatarizona

Old news.. The good part is that the Japs, then the Koreans were at the receiving end of similar stuff for ages and look where they are now. We will get there much faster..

good point and one which i was going to bring up myself. today if i'm not mistaken jap cars are selling in larger numbers in the US than what ford and GM manage to sell. clear testimony to not only the fact that people take time to warm up to cars from newer car making countries but also, the manufacturers do come of age over time.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by chncar

Tata Indica does not pretend to be something it is not, the City Rover did.

To bring up a valid point from that Top-gear comparison (Of the very few valid points they state), the FIAT Panda costs about the same as the City Rover, and had more features to boast!

The positioning should not have been in the same segment as the Panda! (considering Indica is even cheaper than Palio here.)

[raul]

There are many issues here. From a global perspective Tata and Mahindra cannot really compete on equal footing with the global companies. The designs, finish, technology, quality, brand is just not there, yet. These are relatively new companies coming out of a protected market. Its going to take them time to catch up with global standards but catch up they will, especially Tata. There was fantastic coverage of the Nano worldwide. Tata is on the up.

In India they can find markets and grow but they will need to step up their act to play with the big boys which means huge investments in R&D and other things.

There is also the factor of brand and car consciousness in western countries, young guys would be embarrassed to be seen driving some cars etc. that sort of mindset. For Indian companies it will take some time to make their offerings desirable.

Of course all this is moot with the current oil prices, this can change everything. There is definitely a huge change in how we use oil resources coming.

[silver_shadow]

Originally Posted by raul

There are many issues here. From a global perspective Tata and Mahindra cannot really compete on equal footing with the global companies. The designs, finish, technology, quality, brand is just not there, yet. These are relatively new companies coming out of a protected market. Its going to take them time to catch up with global standards but catch up they will, especially Tata. There was fantastic coverage of the Nano worldwide. Tata is on the up.

In India they can find markets and grow but they will need to step up their act to play with the big boys which means huge investments in R&D and other things.

There is also the factor of brand and car consciousness in western countries, young guys would be embarrassed to be seen driving some cars etc. that sort of mindset. For Indian companies it will take some time to make their offerings desirable.

Of course all this is moot with the current oil prices, this can change everything. There is definitely a huge change in how we use oil resources coming.

again, all points in line with what i was saying earlier.

just to give an example of brand image conciousness:
if i'm not mistaken, in the initial days toyota and other jap car makers were considered to make cheap budget cars. in order for toyota to enter the luxury segment in the west, they had to come up with the lexus brand name with it's own seperate luxury car image.