Big news of this week?Carlos Ghosn ties up with almost everybody in India to make all sorts of motor vehicles. Watch me, watch my new hat, and see me swirl round and round, too, as I bring to the land of Hindustan, motors as follows: Luxury cars, but no Z-Car as yet, from Nissan, by Nissan going it alone in India, though they might share common user manufacturing facilities. Wannabe upwardly aiming Logan cars, from Renault, but actually very plebian Romanian Dacias, with Mahindras. Absolutely not luxury cars, but still to figure out whether they will be upraded three-wheelers or down-graded four-wheelers, from Renault and/or Nissan, with Bajaj. And as if that was not enough, there will also be a range of Light Commercial Vehicles with the Hindujas, who already have a relationship with Hino of Japan for engines.
What next? How about motorboat outboard engines and small commuter airplanes? Or better teabags, maybe?
Everybody seems to forget the ever venerable Nissan Jonga and the even older Nissan 3/4 tonner army sloggers. My Dad drove them in the 1950s, and I learnt driving on them in the 1960s. You want tough? Some of them ran on sugarcane juice ?mixtures? during battles when fuel supplies ran low. But hey, they took the name ?Nissan? all over the country, and the newly introduced Hindustan Bedford, Tata Mercedes Benz and British Leyland trucks were not the favoured three-tonners then. All that changed within a few years, and very soon Ashok Leyland and Tata trucks had taken over the toughest of demands put on them, pretty much around the same time that the manufacturers broke free from foreign collaborators. But for small trucks, it was still Nissan, till the LCV revolution aka Tata-407 came along.
At which point the Ordinance factories got around to making more modern trucks of all sizes under licence from Indian manufacturers. But even then, these Nissans, along with the MAN derived ShaktiMAN, were the backbone of the nation?s armed forces. Wherever large trucks could not go. Actually, ever since the anti-pollution lot had them thrown out from city roads, they were the backbone of light and medium transport by road all over the country.
So Mr Ghosn, how about the four-wheel drive and offroad market, the tough small trucks? And more importantly, what are Nissan and Renault bringing to the table, or is it that they just don?t want to get left behind? I mean, can you imagine a single vehicle, of any sort, carrying a combined Bajaj?Hinduja?Mahindra?Ordinance Factories of India?Nissan?Renault and so far unknown what else kind of label? Where will they find that much space? And since Nissan-Renault are going to tie up with Ashok Leyland for Light Commercial Vehicles, then where does that place Mahindras, with their range of LCVs?
Talking about LCVs on Indian roads, how often have you been the victim of a rashly driven one, especially the generic Sumo and Qualis type of people carriers? Pelting past, with upto a dozen people on board, most often from the call centre industry. Many of these now carry a ?How am I driving? kind of sticker, with a phone number, asking other road users to call and report in case they wish to. Your correspondent is pleased to confirm that these do seem to work. I have tried this out in three cities (Delhi, Pune and Bangalore) and in two cases I have seen that the driver has been asked to pull over, probably given a bit of a talking to, and then he proceeds to drive very carefully after that. And in one case, the control room people actually also called me back, to thank me.
And to also tell me that very few people actually took the trouble to do so. Seems they get about one complaint every second day, and they have a fleet of around 300 vehicles on the road. Therefore, if you are fed up of being bullied on the roads by those terrible Sumos and Qualises, then please simply note the number (the phone and the vehicle) and call. Makes things better for all of us.
?veereshmalik@gmail.com
