Ajay Kumar

The December 1998 launch of the Indica by Tata Engineering marked the advent of India's first fully indigenously made car. Group chairman Ratan Tata's presentation on an idea that has worked

Till about two years ago, India was no different from other less developed countries in one crucial aspect: it had not designed and produced a car indigenously. India’s case was even curiouser: the country had sent missiles into space but had not been able to produce an indigenous car.

That situation changed with the launch of the Tata Indica in December 1998. How did Tata Engineering achieve this feat? R N Tata, Executive Chairman of Tata Engineering, shared his experience of creating the Indica with a select audience in New Delhi recently.

Mr Tata was speaking for an ongoing lecture series on "The Ideas That Have Worked". The lecture series, in which Mr Tata was the ninth speaker, is organised by the Ministry of Administrative Reforms, along with the Civil Services Officers Institute and the Andhra Pradesh Civil Services Association. Invited by Arun Shourie, minister for administrative reforms, to speak, Mr Tata chose to speak on "The Indian Car".

His half-hour talk was interspersed with a display of slides and videos on the screen. Click here to see the project schedule.

The story began, said Mr Tata, in 1993, when, speaking at the annual convention of the Automotive Component Manufacturers’ Association (ACMA), he put forth the idea of an Asian car to be produced as a collaborative effort by the Indian automobile industry. The response of the industry, Mr Tata recalled, was a mix of skepticism and cynicism.

Tata Engineering then decided it would attempt to produce the car on its own. In taking this decision, it was emboldened by two factors:

• One: the company’s record of having developed its own products. In the early '80s, Tata Engineering had developed a range of commercial vehicles -- the popular 407 and 709 series-- followed by the Tata Estate and Sierra, both built on a pick-up platform, and later by the Sumo and the Safari.
• Two: Mr Tata's faith in the capabilities of the company's engineers, particularly its 300-odd young engineers, whose talent and skills, he said, are symptomatic of India’s spirit of wanting to dare.

The basic concepts of the car were set out in 1995. The car should, it was decided, be designed around the specific needs of the Indian car owner and would have:

• The inside space of an Ambassador (which is considered to offer the optimum space for the typical Indian family) and the external dimensions of a Zen.
• Easy entry and exit for passengers; this meant a higher suspension and raised back seats.
• World-class standards of safety.
• The economy of diesel.
• Price approximating the Maruti 800.
• Contemporary design.

With these as the specs, the company's designers at its Engineering Research Centre (ERC) created some renderings (see illustrations alongside) of the car which were refined and finalised in association with the famous Milan-based design house, I.D.E.A.

With the aid of a brief video clip, Mr Tata gave a glimpse of the facilities at the ERC. For the Indica, said Mr Tata, ERC’s designers and engineers had done their work entirely using computer aided design (CAD) stations and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Tata Engineering has invested over Rs 120 crore on 225 CAD stations for its 340-odd engineers to work on.

Mr Tata then shared the details of the project to give some idea of its magnitude:

• Total number of engineers who worked on the Indica project: 700.
• Time taken from conception to completion: 31 months.
• Number of components specially developed for the Indica: 3,885
• Number of dies specially manufactured for the Indica: 740
• Number of production fixtures created for the Indica: 4,010
• Cost of the project: Rs 1,700 crore, sub-divided into: development Rs 206 crore, tooling Rs 74 crore, and plant Rs 1,420 crore.

Compared to the $400 million that Tata Engineering spent on creating the Indica, Mr Tata said, the creation of a new car in the West typically entails an investment of well over $1.5- $2 billion in creating the production facilities, with development and tooling costing in the region of $800 million more.

Uploaded in October 2000

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