Tata Motors shuns reports stating phasing out of the Nano. They plan to launch new variants of the Nano in order to boost its sales.
The Tata Nano was Mr. Ratan Tata’s dream project. But the project faced hurdles since day one including shifting of plant from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat. The car was launched in 2009 and the company true to its promise priced it at Rs. 1,00,000/- (ex-factory). However the car didn’t get the response that Tata Motors had hoped for. Tata also admitted that the company made a mistake of advertising the car as the “cheapest car” in the world. In a country where people are extremely bothered about their image, no one wanted to be seen in the “cheapest car”.
So in order to boost the sales of the Tata Nano, the automaker has come up with a new strategy. Tata Motors plans to introduce new variants of the vehicle. They launched the Nano Twist in 2014 and plan to launch the Nano AMT (Automated Manual Transmission) version soon. The Nano AMT might be a success considering the fact that traffic in metropolitan cities has become worse in the past few years and people are slowly shifting towards auto-transmission cars. The Nano with its small footprint and decent pricing might be the choice of urban families as a city runabout.
We feel that Tata should come up with a more upmarket version of the Nano and change the name of the vehicle. Rather than trying to improve the tarnished image of the Nano brand, this would help them get a fresh start. People would look at the car with a different viewpoint and the target audience would be different too. People with a sedan or an SUV might want a car for daily city drives where the small footprint of the Nano would be immensely useful for parking in tight spaces and for driving in congested areas. The vehicle should come with all the essential features as well as basic safety features. We sincerely hope that Tata Motors is able to boost sales of the Nano somehow. After all it’s a great city car.
Source – ETAuto.com