Ambassador keeps on driving in India
Ambassador keeps on driving in India
By Jay Shankar
NEW DELHI (AFP): Some things remain quintessentially Indian. The Taj Mahal. Curries. The Ganges. The Ambassador car.
Go anywhere in India and you will see the high-axled, pug- nosed Ambassador, a throwback to the 1940s, barging its way through the traffic.
Every taxi driver in the capital owns an Ambassador.
The Prime Minister and his cabinet -- by official decree -- all use them.
A foreign tourist, chancing upon a session of parliament, could be forgiven for presuming he had gate-crashed a convention of veteran car lovers.
Appearances, however, can be deceptive.
The Ambassador -- a direct descendant of the British Morris Oxford -- is in danger of running out of gas after gracing Indian roads throughout 50 years of independence.
The car, which monopolized the automobile market up until the early 1980s, now records annual sales of 28,000, a mere seven percent of the total. Of those, barely 8,000 are sold to private buyers.
As such, the Ambassador represents a perfect microcosm of the challenges faced today by Indian industry after decades of government protectionism and patronage.
C.K. Rao, vice-president of manufacturers Hindustan Motors, admits as much.
Under India's "permit Raj", a centralized, Soviet-style economic system that went unchallenged from independence in 1947 to the early 1980s, it was the government which decided on car production and pricing.
"There was a lack of motivation to do better, as prices were controlled," says Rao.
"The car did not undergo any changes until 1993, when we changed the engine and made new interiors."
By then, however, the rot had set in. In the shape of a Japanese-inspired city runaround.
Maruti Udyog Ltd, a joint venture backed by Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp, was to have been the plaything of Sanjay Gandhi, younger son of prime minister Indira.
When he died prematurely, while carrying out aerobatics over New Delhi in 1980, his mother decreed the project to create a "people's car" should continue.
Today, around 75 percent of the entire car market is claimed by Maruti's 800cc model.
It is modern in style, economic and rushing off the production line in vast numbers. The Ambassador -- hand-built, low-tech and with all the maneuverability of an ocean liner -- has been made to look dramatically dated in recent years.
Competitors
To add to the woes of Hindustan Motors, there are now a dozen other overseas competitors, such as Peugeot, Mercedes Benz, General Motors, Daewoo and Honda, who have entered the Indian automobile market in recent years.
The writing, it seems, is on the wall.
Except that this is India, and these are Indian conditions.
No car yet designed can tackle the country's many potholes quite like the Ambassador. No car yet imported can cope with India's rural conditions.
And whenever the Ambassador does break down, there is someone with the ingenuity and know-how to repair it in every one of the country's 600,000 villages.
Perversely, the Ambassador's greatest strength is that it can cope so well with the country's infrastructure weaknesses.
Rao, while accepting that the battle for market share is already lost, believes the car, now equipped with a Japanese- built engine, can survive in its niche for a while longer. There are even plans to increase production to nearer 40,000 a year.
"We know the value-offering cannot be matched by any car," he says. "It's spacious, steady and comfortable.
"It is not a car for the cities. It's appropriate for the majority of Indian roads. As long as the roads are bad, the Ambassador is the right car. So it is important that we do not contemporize it. We will not change its design.
"It has become a part of the landscape. Any village mechanic can repair the car. And a family of more than 10 can travel in it."
The Ambassador's critics, in contrast, say the company's inability to innovate during its years as a pampered government favorite reflect perfectly independent India's continuing industrial failings as it reaches its 50th birthday next month.
Perhaps, however, the ailing Ambassador will have the last laugh, embarking on a cult career to match that of the Volkswagen Beetle and the British Mini.
Last year, Hindustan Motors exported around 300 Ambassadors. Some went to Japan, with the rest returning to the land of their forefathers in Britain.