Dream come true for Nano team

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Pune: It was a 500-odd Nano team at the Engineering Research Centre (ERC) at Tata Motors' Pune plant that was behind Rata Tata's dream: an all-weather affordable car for Indian families.

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"It's a car that made history," the exclusive website for Nano says, introducing the team behind the iconic car led by engineer Girish Wagh.

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"It was an incredibly tough journey - filled with challenges, questions, detours and self-doubts. But the Nano team developed and delivered a car that exceeds the world's expectations beyond their dreams," says Wagh.

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It all started in 2003, when Tata asked a four-member Tata Motors team to start work on a new project. "The brief was very fluid," the website says.

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Nikhil A. Jadhav, industrial designer at INCAT - a Tata group engineering and designing firm - says it began as an advance engineering project.

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"The idea was to try and create a very low cost transportation with four wheels; it was not even defined as a car," said Jadhav, who has been working on the project since inception.

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The Nano design team looked at every alternative to construct the vehicle within the strict price constraints. There were debates on measures to bring down the costs: whether plastics could be used instead of metal, whether a low powered engine would suffice, or even whether doors were necessary.

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As the Nano website says: "One question was a consistent driving factor: What is the bare minimum a customer will accept."

According to Jadhav, the team also looked at other concepts such as soft doors in vinyl with plastic windows, two big doors, or a bar in place of doors. "But all these were turned down by Mr. Tata, he was very clear that it had to be a complete car," he added.

Cutting on costs, not technology

As if in support of this, Tata said at the press conference in Mumbai Monday: "All we set out to do is to move Indian families at an affordable price. It is serendipitous in some manner that things have worked out this way."

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The original thought was to have a conventional front engine and a front wheel drive. But the design team threw conventions to the wind, keeping a rear engine with front wheel drive.

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"It made the car more low-cost, more efficient and more compact ," said assistant general manager of vehicle integration at Tata Motors' research Centre Abhay Deshpande.

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