Tata to buy Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford

Linden · Post by **Linden** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:24 am

In DC a lot of mass market goods are manufactured by countries in what's often referred to as the "developing world", with the high quality stuff being made in Japan and Germany. In an apparent reversal of that idea we have a niche manufacturer being bought by a developing world producer:

http://www.reuters.com/article/mergersN ... 1320080305

Mind you, Tata's Nano looks like a real world version of DC Yugo's Contempo i.e. a cheap and nasty deathtrap.

Post by **Morthrai** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:24 pm

My sister's husband runs a repair and MoT (roadworthiness test) garage and one of his regular customers has a Tata Gurkha. It's as slow as a glacier and handles like one

but it's not actually too badly made, although spare parts are VERY hard to get over here.

Linden · Post by **Linden** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 3:10 pm

In fairness to the Indians I gather they've got a long history of keeping old British designs on the road to the extent of large scale manufacturing of new parts. I certainly wasn't questioning their technical ability. Still, it's probably worth remembering that the Nano is intended for a driving environment where safety considerations aren't necessarily uppermost in the mind the way they often are in the west.

eyalfein · Post by **eyalfein** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:22 pm

I've been inside some of Tata's vehicles that have been manufactured for the poor part of the Indian market (including the public transport) and worn out by use.
Safety is not an issue, tires are only replaced when they explode and primitive tools are very handy in the poorly equipped shops.
These versions of the company's vehicles have no chance to appear in the western markets.

It is a poor infrastructure based on cheap products or leftovers of the west, but roads are overwhelmly busy, the system is running.

Very inspirational for DC.