The race for the $3,000 world car just got hotter after Tata Motors, the other Pune based company Bajaj Auto is going big on the small car.The Renault-Nissan alliance has been working hard on its cheap small car platform for over a year now and its boss Carlos Ghosn had gone on record to say that any such car would have to be made using India''s low cost or as Ghosn puts it - frugal engineering.
Ghosn got the idea to develop such a car after the success of its other low cost experiment the Dacia Logan, which sells well in markets as diverse as Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe and Asia. The trick says that Ghosn is to be able to make money and yet offer a good sticker price to the consumer. So it was crucial to find an Indian partner.
The logical choice may have been Mahindra, given the big partnership the two groups already share. But given the smaller margins that a small car would make and the big scale of infrastructure needed to support a global small car model, Mahindra could not commit.Enter Bajaj, which has been scouting for the perfect platform to go from two wheels to four and Renault''s plans fit in perfectly.The idea is to produce a small car powered by a fuel efficient motor that can be serviced easily and be sold at that all attractive $3,000 price point, which roughly translates to between Rs 1.2 lakh and Rs 1.4 lakh, the same market that Tata Motors is going for.
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