Recently, on the 9th of October, we got the terrible news that Mr. Ratan Tata has passed away succumbing to some age-related health issues at the Breach Candy hospital in Mumbai. Mr. Tata was no ordinary industrialist, but rather, he is the reason for Tata Motors entry into the passenger vehicle segment and its success in that segment that we see today. Tata Motors back in the day, only used to specialize in trucks and buses and they had absolutely no clue about how the passenger segment functioned. It was only in 1991, when Mr. Ratan Tata joined the Tata group, that he started working towards realizing his vision of getting Tata into the passenger vehicle segment as well. To realize his dream and vision, he came up with a car that made quite a name in the Indian automotive sector, and it was none other than the Tata Indica.
The Tata Indica was the first purely indigenous Indian car ever made and it surely required some guts to come up with such a product and especially when you are new to this segment, that too when the Indian economy was experiencing the peak of globalization. All the Indian companies were getting into joint ventures with foreign well-established companies to compete. But Ratan Tata had the guts, and he took this as a challenge and came up with the Indica. Before the Indica, Tata did introduce the Sierra in the passenger segment, but that was still based on the Tata 407 platform, which was one of their commercial vehicles.
India had produced its own cars in the past as well in form of the Ambassador or even the Maruti 800. But these were not completely indigenous cars that were designed for India. The Ambassador was based on the Morris Oxford of British origin and Maruti 800 was a result of Maruti’s partnership with Suzuki, which is a Japanese company. The Indica was a car that was made in India, for India. So, it is very clear and evident that Mr. Ratan Tata had a vision to enter the passenger segment, and the Indica acted as his tool to undertake this operation.
From a mere vision to reality- Mr. Ratan Tata’s journey
Before the Indica actually came into being, it was a huge task to get the design right. Mr. Ratan Tata tried having it designed in India, but the pictures and drawings that came in were of a very outdated looking boxy car. This clearly was not to Mr. Ratan Tata’s liking, and he straight up approached IDEA (Institute of Development in Automotive Engineering), which was situated in Turin, Italy. To get IDEA to work on the designs for the Indica, he had to pay a huge sum. When the design was ready, it left people awestruck as it was totally different looking compared to all that was on offer at the time, with its curves and creases. It was genuinely a beautiful looking car and that was one of the major reasons for it attracting buyers so quick. For the first time in history a car made by Tata Motors was displayed at the Geneva Motor Show and this within itself said a lot about the company. A company that knew nothing about passenger cars, now was beginning to set a name in the segment.
Ratan Tata’s vision and hard work clearly put Tata cars on the global map and all the success that the company holds today, is owed to Mr. Tata’s efforts in bringing out the Indica. At the Geneva Motor Show, the car caught the attention of the FIAT boss, Paolo Cantarella who saw it as a copy of the FIAT Palio which was to be launched in India later on. FIAT, being IDEA’s biggest client, accused IDEA of stealing its design and giving it to Tata.
This issue proved rather detrimental for IDEA, as they lost their biggest client, and the design giant was suffering. At this very point, Ratan Tata being the super compassionate and considerate person that he was, took the key team members of IDEA and started a Tata design company known as TRILIX. This homegrown company along with the members from IDEA came out with some of Tata Motor’s best designs.
Even if we look at the modern Tata cars, like the Harrier or the Safari, Tata Motors have aced it on the design front, and it’s all thanks to TRILIX, which still very much exists. Mr. Tata, himself was very much involved in designing the cars, and even after he had retired from Tata Motors as Chairman, most of their designs would still be passed through him. When the Indica was almost ready to hit the market, he had mentioned in one of his interviews that “this car is of the size of a ZEN, is spacious on the inside like an Ambassador and is available at the price of a Maruti 800, with the cheap running cost of a Diesel”. This explanation garnered a lot of attention and was quite true to the Indica.
Aftermath of the Indica’s Launch
The major challenge for Ratan Tata with the Indica was to ensure its reliability and the initial lots of this car were not reliable. But slowly and gradually things started to get better, and Tata Motors was beginning to get better in this segment, even though, they still had a long way to go. Indica was not a very well put together car and it had hoards of quality issues, receiving criticisms all the time. But this is where Mr. Tata’s sheer determination and will power came in handy and he just did not give up, but rather he learnt from the mistakes and strived for a better tomorrow. Not too long after the Indica was launched, came the different versions of this very car. The Indigo was a sedan version, the Marina was an estate version and the Indigo cs was a compact sedan version, which in fact was Tata’s attempt to invent the compact sedan segment. Mr. Ratan Tata however loved his Marina for the sole reason that he could fold the rear seat and open a lot of space so that he could take his dogs for a drive.
With the coming of the Indica, a whole supplier eco-system was developed under the name of Tata Auto Comp (TACO), and this resulted in better part availability all across India for Tata cars. Indica was not just any normal car that was launched, it was a source of great confidence for Tata Motors and that very confidence led them towards buying off Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford. Often when we come across this fact that Tata bought JLR from Ford, we often relate it to a rumor that when Tata was struggling in the passenger segment, Ford had insulted them and then Ford had to leave India and Tata bought JLR from them. But this is not true and Mr. Tata himself had spoken about this on one of his interviews saying that in fact Ford people never misbehaved with him and he had never had a bad experience with the Ford people.
There came a time when Tata was struggling with the Indica sales. People had got to know about the quality issues associated with the Indica and they were apprehensive in choosing it over the other much more reliable cars that were on offer at the time. Ratan Tata still wanted to keep the company independent and did not want to enter into a joint venture with any global company.
But things were seeming to get grim, and Tata finally entered into a joint venture with FIAT. In fact, FIAT had come to Tata for help as their cars were not selling and they wanted to sell them through Tata dealerships and in return Tata asked them for their 1.3 multijet diesel engine, which was the best small diesel engine around at the time. The deal was signed, and Tata used the 1.3 multijet engine in the new Indica Vista Quadrajet that they introduced. Finally, somewhere in the year 2015, the Vista was discontinued and the Indica name was laid to rest. However, most of the present Tata cars and even the cars that they came up with after the Indica Vista, hold their roots in the original Indica, the one that was born out of Mr. Ratan Tata’s vision.
How was the Indica to drive?
The first major update that came on the Indica was the V2 model which sorted out most of the quality issues. Initial lots of Indicas were offered with 1.4 litre diesel motor and a 1.4 litre petrol motor. The earlier carbureted petrol engine used to make some odd 60 BHP and the revised petrol engine that came later on with the fuel injection technology, used to make 75 BHP, so horsepower increased with the revised engine in the petrol. The diesel used to make a mild 53 BHP and you really needed to make it work in order to get some power out of it.
The gearbox on the Indica was a big let down always. Tata had no experience in making passenger gearboxes and it clearly showed. Gearshifts were not smooth at all and there was a lot of free play in the gearbox. The higher variants of the Indica even got power windows, which was quite a luxury back then. The ride comfort is an area where Tata cars have always excelled, and it was not any different in the case of the Indica. The Indica tarmacked all bad patches of road ahead of you and you just could not even feel a bump filter through the shockers.
The Xeta variant that came after the V2 had softer suspension for enhanced ride comfort, but that came at the cost of handling. Due to the soft suspension setup, the Indica Xeta was a very poor handler and on sharp bends it would be all over the place. Finally came the Indica Vista which was the most sorted out of all the Indicas and it was designed in accordance with the European crash safety regulations and it felt well built and well put together, especially when compared with the earlier Indicas. This car even got the improved 90 hp 1.3 MJD engine from FIAT, and the Vista with that engine was called the Vista D-90, boasting of more power and grunt compared to the standard Vista.
An interesting fact to know is that years after the Indica was discontinued and does not quite exist around us, we still have its genes in the Tata Tiago, which is currently on sale, even as an Electric Vehicle. The Tiago is built on the same platform as the first Indica, which is the X-0 platform. Also, in the present times, Tata is the leading electric vehicle manufacturer in India and has really got a good grasp of that technology. Their EVs are budget-friendly and are in quite a demand looking at the Indian EV market. But is it not intriguing to know where did they get this technology from and where did they experiment it? The truth is that Tata tested its EV technology on the Indica only and they did come up with an Indica EV and even an Indica Vista EV, but these models never saw the light of the day and instead led to the development of the EVs in the Tata lineup that we see today.
A Tribute to Mr. Ratan Tata and his vision
Tata Indica has been instrumental in Tata’s success story, but Indica did not come into existence on its own. Rather, it was born out of Mr. Ratan Tata’s vision to give India an indigenous passenger car, which was affordable yet reliable. There were hiccups at the start, but it all led to Tata Motors becoming one of the leading automobile manufacturers not only in India, but globally. Today, Mr. Ratan Tata is not amongst us, but he has left a legacy for us to remember. From having too many quality issues and reliability issues, to making modern technologically sound sophisticated luxurious cars, Tata has come a very long way, and Mr. Ratan Tata paved the way for this journey to be smooth and fruitful.
His successors will surely bring in new developments and improve things, but he will always remain the engineer of this project, with just one self-made tool in his hand, “the Tata Indica”. Saluting Mr. Ratan Tata for the commendable work he did not only in the automobile sector, but also on humanitarian ground, while we bid him final adieu.
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