Tata Motors has slashed production of its Nano hatchback by around 80 per cent at its Sanand plant in a bid to realign its inventories with fall in demand. The company is now operating one shift a day for four day a week from the earlier six and aims to produce 1500 cars month.
According to a Financial Express report, Tata currently has over 14,000 unsold Nano’s waiting at different stages of the sales pipeline. Despite introducing various attractive financial schemes and a special variant that reduced the Nano’s barebones image slightly, the mass market car is not doing too well.
The company managed to sell around 1500 units in both January and February 2013; this is far lesser than the average of 5000 units a month sold in the period from April to November 2012. It is also likely that Tata has cut production of the Nano to clear stocks of the older variant to make way for a facelift which will be launched later this year. The facelift has been spotted by the team at Indiancarsbikes and mostly features cosmetic changes both on the inside and outside.
The fascia of the car is expected to remain the same as most people relate to the Nano via its bug-eyed look. At the rear, it gets a large chrome strip at the base of what would essentially be the hatch door. The rear bumper also gets a honeycomb designed grille and this most likely to increase cooling.
Inside, the Nano now gets a glove box and integrated speakers on the dashboard itself. However, the music system (with MP3 compatibility, USB and AUX in) is nowhere to been seen and will most likely not make it to the final production version. The Nano will continue to be powered by the same 624cc 2-cylinder engine producing 37bhp and 51Nm of torque. Power is transmitted to the rear-wheels via a four-speed manual gearbox.
Source: Indiancarsbikes and FE
