AUTODROME

For some, the subject of cars has always been an emotive one. While they may be mere machines, they have always seemed greater than the sum of their parts. Ever since they first came around about 130 years ago, cars have been objects of desire and aspiration. One of the reasons for this, as Henry Ford put it, was that cars helped people get over the limits set upon them by geography. The origins of the automobile date back to 1886, when the Benz Patent-Motorwagen was produced by Karl Benz in Germany. This was the first contraption that followed the general layout of the car as we know it today. In the early days of the car, from the late 19 th to the early 20 th centuries, they were accessible only to the rich. Many people dismissed it as a passing fad and thought it would never really catch on. Car manufacturing was a strictly small scale, artisan industry then. Some of the more bizarre thoughts going around at the time were that car production would be limited by our ability to...

The global automobile industry has being growing at its fastest since after the 2008 crisis. This has mainly been due to the growing economic might of China and other developing countries like India. Also, car sales in the USA have reached pre-recession levels.  The car industry is at its liveliest in terms of technology with new technologies like hybrid power and electric vehicles gaining traction among manufacturers worldwide. Furthermore, the consumer base is now younger than ever, as such, consumers are more than ready to lap up such advances. However, in this scenario the biggest gains have been made by luxury car manufacturers. These include brands like Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche to name a few. These brands are all growing at their fastest and with an ever expanding model range. However, the aberration here is that while European luxury brands like the ones mentioned earlier, have witnessed tremendous growth, the Japanese brands have remained laggards...

The automobile industry in India prior to the 1980s was in complete shambles. The only two manufacturers of note were Premier Automobiles in Mumbai and Hindustan Motors in Kolkata. They manufactured the Premier Padmini and the Hindustan Ambassador respectively. The Premier Padmini was based on the Fiat 1100, a car first sold in the 1950s while the Ambassador was little more than a Morris Oxford, a car sold in post-war England. As such, by the 1980s both these cars were hopelessly outdated. However, the buyers did not really have any other options. This was the era of the License Raj. The waiting period stretched into years and the shortage was so acute that used examples were sold at a premium. However, all this changed with the introduction of the 800 by Maruti Suzuki in 1983. The Maruti 800 was everything the Ambassador and the Padmini weren’t. It was small, nimble, efficient and reliable. It was up to date with the latest in Japanese technology and most importantly it was chea...