By Agence France-Presse

SINGUR, India — His voice shaking, security guard Sanjib Chowdhury says he fears opening the gate of the eastern Indian factory that is assembling what will be the world’s cheapest car.

Furious farmers and rights groups say the expropriation of land in West Bengal state for the plant was little more than theft and protesters are doing their best to throw a spanner in the works.

“Villagers are threatening to kill us if we keep working at the site,” he quakes through the iron gate of the project where the Nano, dubbed the “king of econoboxes” with its promised price tag of $2,500, is being made.

“I didn’t report for duty for two days, I was so scared,” Chowdhury said at the factory in Singur in West Bengal, viewed by the state’s Marxist government as a test case for drawing more big-scale industry to the impoverished region.

The car — which Tata chairman Ratan Tata conceived with the aim of getting Indians off their motorcycles and into safer cars — was unveiled with huge fanfare early this year at India’s premier automobile show in New Delhi.

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By Aida Sevilla-Mendoza
Philippine Daily Inquirer

FORD MOTOR CO.’S sale of its Jaguar and Land Rover brands to India’s Tata Motors Ltd. for $1.7 billion is just one sign of a big shift in the global auto industry.

That an Asian manufacturer producing the world’s cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano, would buy two luxury British marques from an ailing US giant automaker is ironic enough. It could only mean that Tata intends to become a global player, using Jaguar and Land Rover’s advanced technologies to challenge high-end competitors like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

Ford, which lost more than $15 billion in the past two years, sold Jaguar and Land Rover at a loss to help fund its restructuring effort after having spun off assets such as the Hertz car rental agency and Aston Martin.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

INDIAN carmaker Tata recently took the automotive world by storm when it launched its $2,500 Nano. The world’s cheapest car, by far, costs only the equivalent of a high-end laptop in this part of the world, at around P100,000.

To be sure, though, Tata threw out all the little extras to come up with only the barest essentials of a car. At 625-cc, it has one windscreen wiper, no power steering, no power windows, no air-conditioner, and will give about 20 km to a liter. And no one in India is complaining, yet, because the Nano has been marketed as a four-wheel vehicle alternative to the motorcycle.

4 times as much

In comparison, a decent three-liter diesel-powered jeepney in the Philippines would cost four times as much. The cheapest car exported to the Philippines is an 800-cc ultra subcompact priced at P319,000.

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