They were hopes which Tata (and everyone else) had from their little wonder Nano and for which Tata prepared and invested huge chunks of money.
Expecting Nano to be a sole independent brand which can carry individual dealerships, Tata also launched Nano exclusive stores which only sold Nano cars. However, what fate Nano suffered (and suffers) is known to almost everybody.
Out of its production capacity of 20,000 cars per month, Nano is bleeding with an average monthly sales of under 1700 units for the past 6 months and these figures are across the nation. Clearly, people have just not accepted Nano despite it being the cheapest car on offer today.
If its a question of selling 1700 odd cars a month, exclusive dealerships really do not make any business sense at all, neither must they be enjoying sitting in their cabins with only a handful of sales every month.
And hence, multitude of these exclusive nano dealerships are shutting shops. It is not clear if these are initiated by Tata or its lack of business which is forcing these dealers to shut shops and in fact it appears to be both!
Tata is working on revamping the Nano brand and portray it as a ‘smart’ city car. In order to achieve this, Tata is lending it with nice little features like power steering, rear openable hatch, larger fuel tank, overall improvement in feel and quality and then their is the upcoming automatic (AMT) transmission.
And amidst reports of Tata shelving out their diesel Nano plans, there are latest spyshots which claim that the project is very much on! The question is, will all this suffice; will Nano be able to sell in desired numbers, ever?
Related: List of 3 Upcoming Variants of Nano
The damage done to the Nano’s reputation, though seems like is beyond repair, can still be salvaged. Tata Nano needs a bigger engine under the hood and an increment by 15-20 kmph in top speed, to stand at par with the Eon and Alto.
Correct – I too am eagerly waiting for a more powerful automatic Nano – my current Nano is 2011, 15000+kms and still drives beautifully!
Service is very poor and i m suffering from it.
Hold on…! With Nano automatic, power steering and bigger/powerful engine soon it could win the hears again! At least I know 2 people who are waiting for automatic version for their wife…