CHENNAI: The Tata Nano’s place in automotive history has been narrowly defined by its commercial performance, but its real legacy lies in how it reshaped global thinking on frugal engineering and platform design, its key inventor V Sumantran said.
“There is a very big story which most people have not fully got to the bottom of,” Sumantran said, arguing that the iconic Nano was neither poorly designed nor conceptually flawed.
“Frankly, the criticism that it was just a cheap car was completely off the mark,” the auto industry veteran said adding the car’s troubles began with the disruption of its manufacturing plan. “The Singur plant was nine months away from start of production. The vendor park was already at plinth level. You can’t just upend a programme of that scale,” he said.
The decision to shift production and still launch within a year forced the company into a rushed workaround. “Sanand was only a site at that time, so the first Nanos were actually made in Pantnagar, alongside the Tata Ace. Most people don’t know that.” That haste, he said, compromised validation.
“In Indian industry, what we’ve learnt from the Japanese and Germans is meticulous planning and testing. So the rush created problems, and the Nano paid the price.” Early incidents, including cars catching fire, sealed public perception. “It was something as simple as plastic embrittlement in a fuel hose. That’s not rocket science,” Sumantran told DT Next during an interaction at the Acko Drive awards event held here recently.
“But once the headlines screamed that a Rs 1 lakh car was unsafe, the narrative stuck.” Despite this, the Nano commanded deep respect globally. “Pure designers loved the challenge of design to cost. I don’t like the word jugaad. I call it cost innovation,” he said.
Recalling Ferrari designer Leonardo Fioravanti and Formula One legend Gordon Murray praising the discipline behind the Nano, he said “Murray told me he spent his life trying to shave 50 grams off a race car, but shaving 50 cents off a car was a far bigger challenge.”
That admiration extended to Carlos Ghosn, the then chief of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. “His first question to me was: what went wrong with the Nano, and how could it have been salvaged?” Sumantran said.
The outcome was transformational. “Out of the ashes of the Nano came a platform that delivered the Kwid, Triber, Kiger and Magnite,” he said, noting “it is the only Renault-Nissan platform designed outside Tokyo or Paris. India should be proud of that.”
On electrification, Sumantran rejected rigid narratives. “There will be horses for courses,” he said, adding “India’s needs are too diverse for one solution. EVs, hybrids and even ICE will all coexist for some time.”
He was candid on regulation too. “In the last 50 years, improvements in fuel economy, emissions and safety have been regulation-led,” he said. But he acknowledged a shift. “Consumers are now saying, ‘I want five stars, not three.’ This kind of pressure is real.”
Sumantran said India is already emerging as a global design hub. “Across autos, aerospace and defence, global OEM engineering is being done in India. We just don’t talk about it.”
On Tamil Nadu, he praised its automotive ecosystem but flagged a concern. “TN has done a great job industrially, but it is also among the worst in traffic fatalities. That has to change.” “We have too much talent for this not to work,” he said.