What If...? An alternate Indian automotive history

Imagine if Mahindra and Ford had gone ahead with their JV in India, how different things would have been today.

BHPian dragracer567 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Alternate history is one of the most interesting niche genres around, it gives you an insight into what the world could've been if one event/decision had changed in history. Of course, we've all thought about how our life would have been if we had attended a certain university or accepted a certain job for example. There is also some very interesting literature on this genre with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle being amongst my favourite. I also religiously follow Youtube channels that postulate various alternate history scenarios (Alternate History Hub, Monsieur Z, whatifalthist etc).

This got me thinking, why don't we do the same for the automotive world? As in, what if at various points in automotive history, different decisions were made by car-makers or different events had played out that would've radically transformed the industry today. Here are a couple of topics off the top of my head:

What if Maruti had partnered with VW instead of Suzuki?

The decision to partner with Maruti was probably the wisest decision that Suzuki had ever made. India is right now, Suzuki's largest market by a fair margin and is a juggernaut of the Indian car industry with a market share of 40-50%. Effectively, apart from Japan, India remains the only market where Suzuki is a dominant player with fellow Japanese carmaker Toyota dominating the rest of the world.

However, Suzuki wasn't always destined to enter the Indian market so early. In fact, VW was the first car manufacturer to be approached for a potential partnership which eventually didn't materialize for some reason (perhaps senior Bhpians could explain why). But had VW been the chosen partner, the Indian automotive market would've been unrecognizable. For one, Maruti-VW wouldn't have been as dominating as Maruti-Suzuki is now given the different business culture that the Germans would've brought over as compared to the Japanese Zaibatsu culture of giant conglomerates. Maruti under VW would've been less monopolistic and we'd have much higher competition in the car market with other manufacturers getting a bigger share of the pie and the market composition (not size) would be fairly similar to the Chinese market today where VW was an early entrant as well. If that's the case, Ford probably won't have left India but GM probably would, given their shattered reputation towards the end due to selling rebadged SAIC cars. A bigger available market share would mean that Japanese Companies like Toyota would bring in their entire global portfolio and might even be the largest carmaker in India piping Maruti-VW. The Tatas and Mahindras will have a harder time competing with global products being launched in India much earlier, keep in mind that the Safari and Scorpio became so popular initially because they had no global competitors.

Coming to Suzuki, it would be a much smaller and niche player globally without the Indian market to soak up so many of its products and it would probably have left the US market much earlier. Also, given the low margins, it's likely that modern Suzuki cars like Swift, Ignis and Baleno would never have been developed. Either Suzuki would've evolved as a company that makes larger cars akin to Nissan/Mazda or would've gone extinct in most markets like Mitsubishi.

What if Porsche never made the Cayenne?

This is a fairly easy one to theorize. The Cayenne effectively saved Porsche making it one of the richest car manufacturers around. So, would Porsche have survived without the Cayenne? It probably would have survived given just how popular the brand is all over the world. If the brand survived on its own, it would probably have stayed on in a similar vein to Maserati or Aston Martin with a small market share and products that are of a lower quality to its German rivals. We would probably still have a 911 but without the profits that the Cayenne and Macan brought in, it would be a much lower quality product similar to the last-gen Astons.

Another possibility is that VW would've absorbed the brand much earlier circa 2004-05 when VW was on a purchasing spree. If this is the case, Porsche would've survived and made top-end cars but these would be more VW clones than the Porsche of today (speaking of which, Porsche would probably have made an SUV in the early 2010s on the Q7/Touareg platform). While the modern Cayenne and Q7 share the same platform, the Cayenne still has its own identity but if Porsche was absorbed by VW at a position of weakness (and not a position of strength like in our timeline), Porsche wouldn't have been able to retain its identity as saying Lamborghini was able to due to its Italian heritage.

More importantly, there wouldn't be a sport-SUV market. The super-fast and good-handling SUV trend started with the Cayenne, so there would be no ML63 AMG, no BMW X5/X6 M, no Urus, no Ferrari/Aston Martin/Maserati SUVs. Rather SUVs would probably have remained benign cross-overs with the thought of 'fast, good handling SUVs' still being considered oxymoronic.

Of course, many of you may disagree with my postulations and might have your own theories on how these alternate histories might've played out.

Please do share if you can think of any such alternate history scenarios in the automotive world, I'll share more in due time in this thread as well.

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

Deadly thread. How did you even think of such a topic, man??

My What Ifs.

• What if VW had entertained the Maruti proposal in the 80s? Would our roads be flooded with VWs instead of Altos then? I don't think so & am glad it was Suzuki. VW isn't really a mass-market brand for our tastes (reliability, FE, cost structure etc.).
• What if super aggressive & dynamic Daewoo HQ in Korea hadn't gone bankrupt? Would we have a formidable Daewoo fighting Hyundai tooth & nail then? I personally loved Daewoo's designs compared to the then weird Hyundais. Consider the beautiful Matiz or the Cielo.
• What if Mahindra wouldn't have divorced Ford? I'm sure it would've led to better Mahindras as well as better Fords. And also, better competition.
• What if Jaypee didn't have financial troubles or get drowned in debt? Imagine how awesome it would be to still host F1 races in India.
• What if Team-BHP wasn't created in 2004. Who would you trust today with honest reviews? Which platform would you use to interact with other petrolheads you'd never met? Where would you create this "What If" thread?

Here's what BHPian V.Narayan had to say on the matter:

Very interesting thread.

What if...

The Govt of India had not implemented its industrial licensing policy that restricted not only the manufacturers of automotive products but also what they could produce and how many pieces a year. As a consequence, we go frozen in the 1950s with Premier, Hindustan & Standard as far as cars went

What if...

We never had the so-called Tariffs Commission in 1952 that disallowed only assembly of cars {as opposed to manufacturing} and disallowed car makers who did not have an Indian partner. As a consequence three assemblers packed up and left - General Motors, Ford and Hillman/Humber.

What if...

The Govt, which controlled everything in the 1960s, had permitted Tata Motors {then TELCO} to manufacture Mercedes Benz cars and vans as JRD and Benz wanted to do as a continuation of their very successful collaboration on trucks.

Here's what BHPian Eddy had to say on the matter:

What if...

Maruti had not partnered with Fiat and got that brilliant 1.3 in India? The automotive scene in India could have been quite different.

What if...

Tata had marketed the Nano better?

Here's what BHPian saikarthik had to say on the matter:

My biggest alternate story would have been,

What if the CMVR (MoRTH) hadn't introduced the sub-4-metre and 1.2-litre categories. We would have had a lot of other global options and epic proportionate cars with more NA large-capacity vehicles.

P.S: I am not against environmental decisions or congestion.

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