There’s only one thing worse than realizing you’re a cynical bastard: realizing you’re a cynical bastard and the world really IS that corrupt. Oh well. The truth hurts, both giving and receiving. In this case, I had high hopes for the Tata Nano. As the son of a Romanian immigrant for whom car ownership was proof positive that America is the world’s greatest country, I believe that the motorization of the world’s largest democracy would unleash that nation’s creativity, productivity and prosperity. But when Tata “launched” the Nano two days ago, without a factory to produce it, I smelled a rat[tan]. The next day, there it was: Tata’s in not-so “secret negotiations” for a billion dollar UK bailout for their ill-advised—not to say hubristic—purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover. So, there’s your timing then. Oh, and the announcement on Autobloggreen this morning that the NSFA (Not Safe For America) Tata will export the micro-car to America (with a few mods, ’natch) in 2011 or 2012 (or 2020) is not to be taken seriously. The argument that Tata’s pie-in-the-sky promise to do the same for Europe actually weakens the case, not strengthens it. Or maybe that’s just me being cynical again. One can only hope.

Autocar reports that Indian automaker Tata will spend part of its day launching their NSFA (Not Safe for America) Nano in Mumbai. In case you’d forgotten—what with all the delays—the Nano is slated to be the world’s cheapest car. “The tinny four-door will sell for 100,000 rupees or $1979 (£1366) when the company takes bookings next month.” Sorry, typo. “Tiny.” So, it’s not REALLY launching the car. And it’s only TAKING BOOKINGS next month. Autocar reveals that DELIVERY will start well after the factory’s built, which “should be up and running next year, despite delays caused by an industrial dispute, but may only have capacity to build 350,000 cars a year. Until then Tata is thought to only be able to provide 50,000 cars annually.” So less, later, maybe from Mumbai. So what’s up with that? “Despite facing huge demand for the Nano, experts estimate the car will not create enough revenue to refinance by June a $2 billion (£1.3 bn) bridging loan Tata used to buy Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford.” Spinning wheels. Got to go ’round.

India’s Tata has gone from darling to dumpling in just a year. The high profile Nano People’s Car project still hasn’t gone into production, and the $2.3b purchase of Jaguar and Land Rover now seems spectacularly ill-timed. Business Week recently covered the story with these great opening notes: “What a difference a year makes.”  India is in the throes of its own economic crisis; thanks to high inflation, high interest rates, tight credit markets, excessive corporate debt and a suddenly spending averse middle class. Pretty much like most places in the world, but a little different.

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The Financial Times (sub) is pissed. Pissed at Peter Mandelson, Britain’s business secretary, and his planned bail-out of Jaguar Land Rover. Forgetting the old school of not mixing reporting with opinion, the FT pulls out the flame thrower and blasts away: “It is hard to imagine a less deserving candidate. The luxury carmaker fails the public interest test on two key grounds. First, its products are of questionable social utility. For the government to allocate scarce funds to prop up the production of the 4.2 Litre V8 Petrol Supercharged Jaguar is a nonsense. It has a top speed of more than 150mph, emits 299g of carbon dioxide per kilometre and costs about three times the average annual wage. True, the UK car industry employs 190,000 people directly and supports several hundred thousand more once components and retailing are taken into account. But if Mr Mandelson wants the government to underwrite this £50b industry, he should harness such public funds as are available to develop the green cars of the future, not pander to vested interests.”

Hmmm. Let us remind you: This is not a rabid blog. This is the venerable Financial Times. We kid you not. Would the pink Financial Times be so ferocious if Land Rover and Jaguar still be a company that’s firmly in British hands? We guess not. The FT seems to have issues with the current owners of Land Rover and Jaguar, who happen to sit in one of Britain’s old and long departed crown colonies. After refilling the flame thrower, the FT launches an incendiary attack in the easterly direction:
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..although some US dealers might be nice! Indian firm Mahindra and Mahindra showed this tasty little neo-Willys at the recent Bologna auto show. The the 12-foot long, 1.5 ton off-roader concept sports a 2.5 liter diesel four, making 108 hp and 250 Nm. And since it is just a concept, that’s about all the info that Auto Motor und Sport could dig up.

Since the first mutterings of an auto industry bailout, the idea has wrapped itself in unabashedly patriotic rhetoric. Now that the battle for the billions has been joined, this nationalist veneer is reaching near-self-parody levels of earnestness. All the while we’ve been arguing that saving American jobs and saving the Detroit Three in their current forms are mutually exclusive goals. As reality slowly becomes too real to ignore, directors, representatives and pundits are beginning to acknowledge this trade-off, although you might be surprised by how they’re playing. Or, if you’re as cynical as we are, not. The gameplan comes from Mark Phelan of the Detroit Free Press, who argues that to survive, Ford and GM must “must show a business plan that’s profitable at much lower sales volume and has upside flexibility to build more vehicles and for workers to make more money with overtime. This will require plant closures and layoffs.” At home, of course. Meanwhile, Phelan argues that “GM and Ford’s greatest assets are their worldwide facilities and capabilities…

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Chinese mothers don’t admonish their one-and-only child to “eat up, there are children starving back in America.” But we’re getting there. Case in point: This weekend, another Rolls-Royce showroom opened in Shenzen, Gasgoo reports. It’s the seventh Rolls Royce retail location in China. Another one, located in China’s industrial center Ningbo, will open its doors in a few months. Rollers are on a roll in China. I counted two Phantoms alone in the underground garage of my Beijing building. At the Shenzen opening, Rolls presented their new Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé to the Chinese public. It’s their entry model. “Nearly two-thirds of Coupé customers worldwide have not owned a Rolls-Royce before,” said Jenny Zheng, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars’ General Manager for Greater China. BMW are thanking their lucky stars…

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FIAT and Tata have been cosying up to each other for some time. Ratan Tata was elected to the board of Directors at FIAT at Sergio Marchionne’s request, FIAT are looking to supply engines for Land Rover and Jaguar (A Jaguar XK with a Ferrari sourced engine? Fancy that!) and their joint ventures in India. But it seems, FIAT want a slice of Tata pie now (no, dirty jokes, please). The Economic Times of India reports that FIAT want to launch their version of the “world cheapest car” by 2010. However, Sergio Marchionne (FIAT’s CEO) didn’t disclose the price of the car. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I’m guessing it’s got to be less that Tata’s $2500 for the Nano, if it’s to qualify as “the world’s cheapest car”. Marchionne also didn’t say how it would be built, where it would be built, how much would be shared with the Nano, or how many Bothans died to bring us this information. Meanwhile, doesn’t Tata need to sort out its own production issues first?

While GM, Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi are readying their electric vehicles, a new contender has emerged and is aiming to beat them all to the punch. Tata motors, in conjunction with Norway’s THINK!, plans to launch an electric car themselves. Reuters reports that the car will be based on the Tata Indica and be launched in Norway within one year. S. Ravishankar, senior general manager at Tata Motors’ engineering research centre, says that the car can run for 175 km (110 miles) to 200 km when fully charged with a “two-pack” battery, but mileage could vary according to the battery used. (Ya think?) There’s little doubt that, if successful, Tata will use the Jaguar/Land Rover global dealer network to sell these cars. “Could I interest sir in a Jaguar XJ? A Supercharged Range Rover sport? A Tata Nano? or an Electric Tata Indica?” Uh, maybe not.

Commentators criticize GM’s executives for being “out of touch” and “detached from reality.” Nonsense. Reuters reports that GM’s COO (and CEO in waiting) spoke the truth before jobbing journos at the opening of a $200m production plant in Talegon, India.  Yes, after revising its ’08 sales estimates gently downwards– twice– and talking about an “economic recovery” at every possible opportunity,  Fritz Henderson has finally admitted that GM’s biz is on the skids all the way into ’09 [as stated above]. In fact, it’s so bad that he might even stop saying the rest of the world is enough. “The most important thing we can do is to turn around the North American business,” Fritz  pronounced. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. Henderson returned to Ye Olde developing countries Spin. “We see greater consumer resilience in emerging economies. We expect growth in China, India and other emerging markets will continue.” Nick Reilly (another GM executive) rogered that. “We are on track for full-year profit growth in Asia despite the hit we took in Q2.” Characteristically, Mr Reilly didn’t state a time line for this recovery. But GM’s got big plans. Forbes reports GM’s new Indian plant can crank out 140k units a year. With The General’s total regional sales running at about 72k units p.a., they’ve got some work major ahead of them. Either that or a shitload of surplus production capacity.

Automotive News (sub) reports that Indian tractor firm Mahindra and Mahindra has delayed the US launch of its Appalachian pickup, built in Chennai, India. M&M's American distributor Global Vehicles was ready to start chasing its goal of 50k annual sales of the diesel four-banger light truck, when its CEO got a call from Mr Anand Mahindra himself. The message was simple: "My family's name is going onto this vehicle, and it's not going to fail." Mahindra is using the delay to log some 3.2m American miles on 25 trucks in hopes of fine-tuning it for the US market, with a particular eye on reliability. 324 dealers across the company have signed up to sell the Appalachian, but most have not yet built stores, so the delay could only help there as well. Oh, and there's one more thing… the diesel hasn't passed the EPA's new 50-state diesel standards. Global Vehicles and M&M swear on a stack of bibles that it will pass with flying colors, but with the price of diesel staying high, efficiency ratings will be crucial to the Appalachian's success. And since they've got the extra time, maybe they'll find some clever way to explain why an Indian truck has been named after a region of America. Maybe.

We reported earlier that new Jag and Landie owners Tata Motors want to take its once-proud luxury brands back upmarket. According to Auto Motor und Sport, boss Ratan Tata has suggested to investors that Jaguar could revive the Daimler brand to take on Bentley and Rolls. Daimler as in Mercedes? Nein. A little history… Gottlieb Daimler sold his cars in Germany under the Mercedes name. He also licensed the construction of his engine in England. Jaguar bought that company, known as Daimler, in 1960. By the time Ford bought Jaguar in 1989, the Daimler name had become [more or less] a Jaguar trim line, denoting the top level of XJ Sedans in every market but America (where it was called the Vanden Plas to avoid confusion with Daimler-Chrysler). Mercedes-Benz paid Ford $20m for non-exclusive rights to the Daimler name. Ford then sold the Jag, Land Rover and Daimler brands to Tata Motors. Now, for those of you who think think that reviving the storied Daimler name is a no-brainer for Ratan's mob, I have one word: Maybach.  

Tata's Nano will officially become the world's cheapest car when it hits the Indian market this October. Sure, Tata blew its 1 Lakh ($2,500) price target, thanks to rising steel costs, but demand is still expected to exceed supply. Or so says Tata Chairman Ratan Tata [via Automotive News, sub]. Judging by the number of variants said to be in development, Tata's putting his money where his mouth is. A diesel version is on the way, and electric or compressed-air models could be next. And adding eco-friendly drivetrains can only help if the Nano actually attempts a launch in Europe in four years, as is rumored. After all, as an EV the Nano's weaknesses (made of cardboard, rolls in crosswinds) are actually strengths (light, cheap). And at the price point, it's more than competitive with the Zap Xebras of the world (pending a convincing road test). This may be why Automotive News Europe (sub) reports that Fiat is considering selling the Nano. "We have held talks about the Nano being marketed in markets where Fiat has already a strong presence," says Ratan Tata. "I am open to consider a partnership." Which means we'll all be able to buy the Tata Nano with a Fiat badge at a MINI store in, say, 2010?

Anyone remember the 1932 film If I Had A Million? Didn't think so. Long story short, a dying rich man picks eight people at random from the phone book and gives each of them $1,000,000. The best sequence (of course) belongs to W.C. Fields. Fed-up with "road hogs" and "Sunday drivers," he buys a phalanx of jalopies and begins to run the offending cars off the road. Then, when both the hog and Fields's jalopy have been totaled in a ditch, he climbs into the next junker (he's paying a a bunch of kids to follow behind him in "fresh "cars) and looks for a new target. I mention this classic scene because the Tata Nano's $2,500 price has given me ideas. I mean, for not that much money I could remove a lot of first gen Dodge Caravans from the road [Ed: Jonny's convinced that all traffic everywhere would improve if still existing K-Car Dodge Caravans were outlawed]. However, like most of my fantasies, this one ain't going to happen. Looks like the rising cost of steel is turning into the rising price of Tata Nanos. For their part, Tata ain't saying nuthin' 'bout nuthin'. But Automotive News [sub] is reporting that the Indian automaker is trying to cut deals with its suppliers to keep raw material costs down. Luckily for Tata, they happen to own Tata Steel Ltd., the largest steel producer in India. However, as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things– steel prices are up. As for my twisted plans, I should be able to get all the Hummer H2s I need for less than $2,500 real soon. 

Those of you wishing for a sensible, small, utilitarian diesel engined pickup truck are about to get your wish. The Wall Street Journal reports Mahindra & Mhaindra's plan to release its Appalachian model mid-size pickup is on schedule for 2009. Previous reports  tell us that the truck will feature a 2.2-liter, four-cylinder diesel rated at 150hp and 300 ft. lbs. Preliminary specifications tell of a six-speed automatic transmission, electronic stability control and a 7.5 ft. long bed. Mahindra's importer Global Vehicles (GV) has a… er… colorful history. Some years ago, GV tried to import a mini-Hummer style vehicle from Aro S.A. of Romania. The effort went down in flames; the Romanians could never jump the safety and emissions regulatory hurdles. Mahindra, on the other hand, is a far more capable company than Aro and is already a force in the U.S. farm tractor market.  More fantastic is Mahindra's claim that it will release a diesel-electric hybrid version in (you know it, you love it) 2010. Competition in the shrinking U.S. light truck market shows no signs of letting up. Now if it could just begin…