In an e-mail interview, Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata fielded questions on his Rs 1-lakh car. Excerpts:

Is it possible to build a car for Rs 1 lakh? If yes, will it indeed be a car?

Right now, it wouldn't be appropriate to give too much detail on the car. Closer to the time it's in the market, it would be right to talk about it. However, I can explain to you the concept. Before I do that, I should mention that the one lakh figure did not come from me. It was imprinted in the media by one of the journalists to whom I had talked about the small car in large volumes and he asked me at what price would the car sell. I said it would be about 1,00,000 rupees or so. This was blown out of proportions. So, rather than getting distressed, I took it up as a challenge. There is nothing sacrosanct about the one-lakh figure. In my opinion, it is a ballpark figure that we hope to address, but undoubtedly we need to bear in mind inflation and other market conditions. The car would be positioned between the motorcycle and the small car.

Conceptually, we are looking at catering to the Indian market. The intention is that today you see a family of three or four all crowded on a scooter where you see the kid standing in the front and the mother holding her baby in her arms. It should give a family a more weatherproof means of transport. Thus, we are looking at a product to position it somewhere in between that market and the lower end of the four-wheeler market. The route that we looked at is something that would not be a stripped-down four-wheeler or an upgrade of a two-wheeler motorcycle, but something that would be on its own, bearing the costs targets we had in mind.

How far has Tata Motors progressed with its project for the Rs 1-lakh car? I believe a prototype is ready. Does it meet your expectations?

We are now at a point where we are going to start productionising the car. Yes, the prototypes of the car are running. The issues that we are looking at today are to do with the costs of steel, and whether it should be a steel version or be made of engineering plastics. If it is steel, it could be spot-welded like any other vehicle or it could use modern-day adhesives. We are looking at both. If it is plastic, we don't need any adhesives.

We have developed now what would be the structure of the car. It would be a gearless vehicle powered by a rear-engine that would seat four-to-five people. On the technology front, we have gone to Delphi for the engine management system, as in India there is no electronic engine management system available. The car would have the continuously variable transmission (CVT) technology. As regards the styling, we have taken help from the Italian design house, idea, which earlier worked with Tata Motors on the Indica.

It would be a family car, not a city car with two seats. We are looking at two-three kinds of trim levels. At the fundamental level, it could be a car that might have curtains instead of doors-more akin to the kind of use a farmer might have. It will be similar to how a three-wheeler looks today, but being a proper car that's just like today's car. It will meet all the emission requirements. The prototypes are currently doing the test run without the body. Along with the Indica, it would be the growth focus for Tata Motors in the medium term in the automobile sector, in which the group could invest up to Rs 30,000 crore in the next few years.

When does the company hope to commercially launch the Rs 1-lakh car?

My best estimate would be that in the next two-and-half to three years-by 2008 the car would be out.

The Global Small Cars
There's a stunning variety of such cars worldwide. A random look:

Citroen C1
ENGINE: Petrol-998 cc, 3-cylinder, 68 hp; Diesel-1,398 cc, 4-cylinder, 55 hp
PRICE: Rs 5,13,105-6,67,155
Fifty-seven years after Pierre Boulanger stunned the French automotive world by launching a "farmer's car", the 2CV, Citroen continues to boast of a strong portfolio of small cars.

Sitara
ENGINE: Petrol, 170 cc, single-cylinder
PRICE: Rs 92,345
The oddball in this selection, the Sitara is Pakistan's people cart but meant for city traffic. Despite its odd looks, the Habib Motor-manufactured cart gives 25 km to a litre!

Smart Forfour
ENGINE: Petrol & Diesel, 1,124 cc-1,493 cc, 3-cylinder, 68-177 hp
PRICE: Rs 5,76,305-13,58,405
This DaimlerChrysler brand is easily the smartest small car on four wheels, but it's not positioned as a means of cheap personal transport. If you've bought Smart, you are more interested in making a statement about yourself.

Oka City
ENGINE: Petrol, 749 cc, 2-cylinder, 35 hp
PRICE: Rs 3,51,560
First launched in Russia in 1987 by truck manufacturer KAMAZ, Oka has sold more than 300,000 units. It is still the cheapest car in Russia.

Aixam 751
ENGINE: Diesel, 479 cc, 2-cylinder, 12.9 hp,
PRICE: Rs 4,56,456-5,43,400*
From three- to four-wheelers, and now to cute small cars, this French micro-manufacturer, with whom Kinetic had tied up to launch a small car, makes about 13,000 cars a year.
*Not including taxes

Daihatsu Sirion
ENGINE: Petrol, 1,298 cc, 3-cylinder, 86 bhp
PRICE: Rs 6,30,000
Expect one of the Daihatsu, where Toyota owns 51 per cent, cars (with a 1-litre engine) in India soon. A plant with an annual capacity of 1 lakh is expected near Bangalore.

The Quadricycle "Cars"

Tata's Ace: Meant to shake the Bajaj bastion

Do you know what was the vehicle Henry Ford first made? No, not a car, but a quadricycle. So as you might have guessed, a quadricycle is a four-wheeler but not quite a car. According to the European definition, a quadricycle must not weigh more than 400 kg and carry load in excess of 200 kg, and the output must not exceed 15kw or 20.11 hp. India currently has no quadricycle standards, but SIAM has submitted two proposals, since there seems to be (to put it mildly) a divergence of opinion among its members. It's easy to see why there are differences among vehicle makes over quad standards. A quad can be used for a back-door entry into the small car market. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of action in the Indian automotive industry in the quad space. Bajaj Auto, most recently, announced that it would build a commercial four-wheeler, which, at a later date, can be turned into a passenger vehicle. Bajaj already makes three-wheelers and has access to a two-wheeler vendor base. Rajiv Bajaj, however, isn't willing to talk about his quad at this time, and an e-mailed questionnaire to his office went unanswered.

Quad on their mind: Bajaj Auto's Bajaj, M&M's Mahindra and TVS' Srinivasan

BT learns there are others trying to build quads too. Mahindra & Mahindra, Piaggio and TVS Motor, for example. Piaggio actually displayed a quad at last year's AutoExpo. As for TVS Motor, with the company's Chairman Venu Srinivasan busy fighting two-wheeler wars, it's unlikely that he will invest precious time and money into building one. But for M&M, which also didn't reply to e-mailed questions, it makes eminent sense to launch one. It can expand its range and reach in the small commercial vehicles segment, like Tata Motors has with Ace (see picture). Priced at about Rs 2.2 lakh, the Ace sports a 700-cc, 16-hp, two-cylinder diesel engine borrowed from the Indica (the Tatas literally halved the engine to suit Ace). Many in the industry see it as a precursor to the Rs 1-lakh car. Designed as a city commercial vehicle, quads like the Ace will be aimed at Bajaj's commercial three-wheelers. There's buzz in the industry that the Tatas are keen to push more manufacturer-friendly quad standards to use that as a route to the Rs 1-lakh car. However, Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata has denied that his small car will be a quad in disguise.

The Other Rs 1-Lakh Car

Abhinav Tiwari: Designed the alternative Rs 1-lakh car

Ratan Tata isn't the only one dreaming of building a car for Rs 1 lakh. Little-known Pune-based Conex AvioAuto's Avinash Belgamwar is another man who dreams of such a car. He's already got two NID students, Abhinav Tiwari and Amit Patankar, to desing a protoype for him. While details of how he plans to productionise the car are not available, Belgamwar is confident that it can be made and sold for Rs 1.20 lakh, including taxes.

Here's a look at the car's specs:

Engine: 500-cc, 25-hp rear-mounted, obviates the need for expensive front-wheel drive system

Fuel: CNG and auto LPG. Designers promise 25 km per kg of fuel

Body: To keep costs down, designers plan to use similar dies for both left and right doors

Highlight: Rotating co-passenger seats for easy entry/exit

-Ahona Ghosh and Kushan Mitra

Dilip Chhabria's Blueprint For A Rs 1-lakh Car
The Rs 1-lakh, four-seater vehicle is possible, he says, and takes a look at the product composition and feasibility:

Product Composition: Based on today's bill of materials (BoM) of Rs 75,000 for a three-wheeler and on the assumption that a Rs 1-lakh vehicle will drive volumes of one million plus annually, following would be the product scenario: 2.4 metre overall length, 1.5 metre width and 1.5 metre height, a three-wheel vehicle with two 8-inch diameter wheels at the front for stability as well as low floor for packaging efficiencies and low steering effort with single, 18-inch diameter wheel at rear.

A large door on either side to facilitate better ingress and egress, with a centre-point manual rotating side window. Two seats at front, sitting almost vertically atop the front wheels and one bench to accommodate two children at rear. Probable power plant: 600-cc, two-cylinder, air-cooled, rear-mounted and rear-drive engine. This will afford good power to the 600-kg GVW car-the weight ratio that can be achieved through a monocoque steel today.

Feasibility: Starting with the assumption of a three-wheeler's BoM and considering the million-plus volume, the manufacturer will need to engineer suitable power plant, taking cues from several such configurations available globally. The three-wheeler setup is recommended for the obvious benefits of lower emission and other regulatory norms to comply with as well as the lower costs associated with far fewer components.

Based on the likely BoM of Rs 70,000 and with the addition of manufacturing costs of 6 per cent plus the taxation component (a manufacturing plant set up in the north-east or Bhuj would be excise-free), and after the inclusion of distribution and marketing costs, it is possible to make this car at Rs 1 lakh. The main ingredient being the low amortisation of Rs 500 per vehicle achieved through a lifecycle volume of 10 million units on a capital outlay of Rs 500 crore.While a three-wheel configuration might seem to be noisy, slow, archaic and prematurely developed in light of our perception of today's three-wheelers, the trick in my proposed vehicle is one of a tear-shaped, fully cab forward, chic and trendy, albeit radical, style, which will be coupled with the free-revving, high-output engine of tomorrow.

Dilip Chhabria is a Mumbai-based automotive designer

How TVS Group's K. Mahesh Built a car For Rs 15,000

Amateur inventor: Mahesh (sitting) with his son Krishna

It was 1962, and I was 18, when I got it into my head that I should build a light aircraft with imported kit and drawings as advertised in Popular Mechanics. So I asked my father, T.S. Krishna, for $1,500 (Rs 12,000, according to the then exchange rate of Rs 8 to a dollar) to import the kit. "You are not getting anything that flies," was his reply. As a kid, I used to work in various departments of the TVS service station every summer, and one fine day-I was on a summer break in Madurai from IIT Madras, where I was a second-year student-I decided that I would make a car instead. The question was, how to go about it?

Roping in the services of a fitter and a technician, I started with literally drawing the outline of the chassis with a chalk on the floor, bent GI pipes to make the outline body shape and welded the cross channels for strength. I scrounged around roadside repair shops and located an Austin (1950) steering box and tie rod ends, and slapped a Triumph (300-cc, single-cylinder) engine (1940 vintage) on it and picked up wheels from a Vespa scooter. Much like in a cycle, we put a chain from the engine to the rear wheels, using a single live shaft with no differential! The Triumph engine had no oil pump, so oil had to be pumped manually, but the car, which cost me Rs 15,000 or so, worked just the same and gave me 15 miles to a gallon. But it had no reverse gear and pumping oil was tricky and messy, so we replaced it with a Royal Enfield 350-cc engine with a reverse gear from a totally written-off mobike, bought from an insurance company for a grand sum of Rs 750. With that it was ready for regular use (without a body, of course, except the mud guards), and I even had it shipped to Madras and was driving around the city till I graduated from IIT Madras, where it proved to be quite an eye-turner.

On the city roads, dogs would sometimes chase me, but I was well armed to deal with them-I used to keep an engine starting lever handle in case of an attack. Later, my nephew Badri Vijayaraghavan carried out several modifications to the car and it became a family favorite; my cousins would drive it around. The longest trip was driving it to Madurai from Chennai and then to Kodaikanal hills in 1963. I faced only one breakdown-a broken chain link.

After I graduated, it fell into disrepair as no one was able to handle this temperamental driving machine, until three years ago, when I decided to refurbish it. Sometime back I tried driving it on Chennai roads, but realised that traffic was too much to do what I did with ease in the 1960s. But it was great fun driving this machine at 80 kmph. It was registered as an LCV in 1963, so I am happy it was recognised as a car of sorts.

K. Mahesh is the Chairman & MD of Sundaram Brake Linings