Small Wonder

Nano has cute looks and contemporary styling. Good paint quality and exterior finish.

With the unveiling of the much awaited small car from Tata earlier this evening, the Nano has had more hype and attention from the world media than any other Indian carmaker in the past. When Mr. Ratan Tata committed to making a low cost 100,000/- Rupee car, there was much skepticism. Yes, the Nano really will cost you over the benchmark ‘1 Lakh’, but the fact remains that anyone who has been with developing an automobile or a product ground up, which has such high benchmarks to meet, will agree that Tata has done a fairly good job of sticking to it’s promise.

The Nano, earlier known by code names like the ‘Zing’ or ‘Mint’ just became popularly known as the ‘Tata 1 Lakh car’ Early sketches, drawings and various illustrations, do the Nano no justice. It’s an incredibly contemporary looking car with extremely pleasing styling and there is a certain sportiness to it’s overall stance. It’s oval-ish shape with a wheel at each corner, combined with the overall waistline and rear fender slash, makes the Nano look well balanced and clean. Tata’s signature ‘family tail-lamps’ dominate the rear giving the Nano a mini-Indica look and the nose has the centerline which is part of Tata’s new design theme, first seen on the Indica Vista. The large headlamps are a little reminiscent of the Wagon-R but really do add quite a sparkle to the Nano’s nose.

Tata Motors went through many iterations and full scale mock-ups during the design stage of the car. Tata Motor’s had their objectives clearly cut out for them. The car had to be safe, environmentally friendly, a small foot-print on the road and yet have roomy interiors, minimum driver fatigue, comfortable for four tall adults, low cost of purchase and low cost of ownership and low running costs. With such tall orders, the R&D team really did have their task cut out. At various stages of the metamorphosis Tata considered using plastic panels, cloth doors, no doors(!), only a door on each side, but with Mr. Ratan Tata’s personal involvement with the project and his dream of giving the Indian masses a safe, reliable and efficient form of transport (rather than have a family of four on a two-wheeler), the Nano finally now uses a combination of rolled sections and steel panels for the bodyshell. This gives it rigidity and strength and it can even meet the EU crash norms. The only plastics you’ll find on the car’s exterior are the bumpers and some trim bits, and everything else is sheet metal – well finished at that.

Very mini-Indica like rear end is unmistakably Tata. Love the yellow paint on the LX!

We were lucky enough to lay our hands on the Nano at the Tata facility and give you this first-hand driving experience. Now one must remember that the Nano has been built to a price and has been built to serve a purpose. Lose this chain of thought and one really can lose sight of what the car is all about. When you compare the Nano to the current people’s car – the 800, the Nano is actually about 7% smaller than the 800, but what is so amazing is that it’s actually 21% roomier on the inside than the 800. It’s also got much better headroom and the one thing that Tata worked on is ingress and egress. Saree clad women, senior citizens and the arthritic will particularly fall in love with the way you just step in and out of the car. The doors open nice and wide and it’s by far one of the easiest small cars to get in and out of. However, the doors are light and tend to close on you, and Tata is working on a mechanism that ensures that the door has a sort of stopper arrangement so it doesn’t close on you when you’re trying to get in.

The Nano is available in three variants. The base version which is just the ‘Nano’, the mid level variant which is the ‘Nano CX’ and the top-of-the-line ‘Nano LX’. While the base version is a real bare-bones car with nothing in the way of creature comforts, the CX comes with HVAC, but it’s the top-of-the-line LX which I think most people would put their money on. Nice Fabric seats, HVAC, fog lamps, Central locking, front power windows, body coloured bumpers and fabric inserts in the door pads really do make the Nano feel a little more special. And then there are the chirpy shades that the LX is available with! We simply love the Sunshine yellow on the LX and are figuring out a way to smuggle one out of the factory! While the base version and the CX are available in white, red and blue the LX is available in yellow, a bluish-silver and gold.

Interiors spacious, if a bit spartan but seats four large adults comfortably. We miss storage spaces like a glovebox though.

Once in the drivers seat, you realize that the seats are quite good even for large frames, and you find a comfortable driving position quite easily. The LX variant has adjustable driver and front passenger seats whereas the CX and the base version just have an adjustable driver’s seat. There’s great visibility all around thanks to the large greenhouse and the view out of the front windscreen is almost panoramic. The only thing that obscures visibility somewhat is the slightly high set single wiper (with an integrated wash jet) and the fact that no variant of the Nano comes with the left side mirror as standard is a little disappointing. The interiors are where you realize that this is indeed a car built to a budget. You have a single piece mould for the dash with huge recesses and the speedo, and the digital fuel gauge apart from the other telltale lights rest in a central pod. There’s fantastic legroom in the front – one of the advantages of having the engine packaged in the rear of the car, which really did help evolve the overall styling and packaging. We however wished that the Nano did have some sort of a glove-box or some more useful storage space on the inside. Some of the interior plastics, like the door locking knobs really need to be improved as could the multifunction stalks – which had sharp edges and left a lot to be desired on the fit and finish of the interior. The circular air vents are quite capable of delivering a nice blast of air throughout the Nano’s cabin and they also close shut.

It’s when you crank up the Nano, you realize it’s a small car. The engine sounds quite wheezy when it’s starting up and settles to a slightly unsteady idle – which is quite apparent when you open one of the doors and watch them vibrate to the thump of the engine. Maybe better (and more expensive) fluid filled engine mounts could sort this out. It’s not unnerving, but just could have been a little better. The one rather disappointing thing about hearing the Nano at idle on the outside is that it sounds like an Autorickshaw! But give it a few revs and it settles into a more car like sound. On the inside however, you can’t hear the 624cc, inline-twin, all aluminum engine humming away. With 33bhp @ 5250 rpm and 48nm of torque between 2500-4000 rpm the engine is more than capable of hauling its 600 kilo kerb weight. This little engine is mated to a four speed synchromesh gearbox that powers the rear wheels. We are told the 1litre Nano, the diesel and the CVT are all still under development so don’t expect it out just yet.

Acceleration even with the air-conditioning is not really too bad and much quicker than you’d expect. You do however hit the rev limiter quite quickly in second and third (about 5500 rpm) but it does manage to whisk you to 60kmph in about 9seconds. It’s got a nice sporty exhaust note on the inside and feels quite nimble off its feet. At one point we managed to squeeze six fully sized adults into the car and it was still fairly sprightly! The car takes close the 30 seconds to hit the century mark, since it has a very tall final drive, but it is quite comfortable cruising at 80 kph. The Nano feels like it has a lot more poke left in the engine and does feel like it could hit the120kph mark easily, but Tata have limited the top whack to a more restrained 105kph in the interests of safety and powertrain reliability.. Gearshifts, thanks to the cable operated shift are slick and the throws are fairly short. The clutch action is also fairly light and progressive. The Nano brakes fairly well but we weren’t too fond of the slightly spongy feeling pedal, but there is bite once the pedal has traveled about halfway. The brake feel could be attributed to the fact that the Nano uses drums at both the front and the rear.

With a rear-engined, rear wheel drive setup, the Nano’s non-power assisted steering is fairly light and one never really feels the need of any assistance, even whilst parking. It’s also got an incredibly tight 4 meter turning radius so you can run around in circles all day in the most crowded of roads! The Nano also handles surprisingly well for a small car. Even though there is a little roll thanks to it’s tallish body and narrow footprint at no time does it feel unsafe, even when pushed at its limit. This is thanks to the Independent front and rear suspension setup which sport gas-charged dampers and the slightly wider 155/65 R12 rear tyre as opposed to the front tyres which are 135/70 R12. The tubeless tyres were specially developed by MRF for the Nano and do have a fair amount of grip. The Nano does ride a little stiffer than we would have liked, but no doubt the stiffer setup does aid handling. There’s also a good guess that the tyres are running a harder compound in the interest of longevity.

Simple no-nonsense instrumentation sports a digital Odo and fuel level indicator. Nano zips to 60 in about 9 secs.

The interior is fairly roomy and even tall passengers will have no problems in the rear seat. There’s plenty of headroom and legroom – even for six footers! Unfortunately the rear seat is also the only way to access the boot space – the space basically between the engine bulkhead and the parcel tray, which incidentally is available on the CX and LX variants. You need to flip the rear seats down to access the ‘boot’ and it’s a real pity that the hatch or even the rear windscreen doesn’t open on a gas strut – that would have really made the ‘boot’ far more usable and accessible.

If you’re looking for the spare tyre, you need to pop the nose of the Nano open! The spare is a full size tyre, albeit the front one which is good enough to do duty on the rear end in an emergency till you get the wider rear tyre fixed. The nose-hatch also houses the fuel – filler which feeds the 15 litre fuel tank, which incidentally is under the passenger seat. There’s also the windscreen wash filler, and the brake oil reservoir. Tata claims a mileage of about 23kmpl, which should give the Nano an effective range of 300 kilometers from tank to tank. The car will be launched with a 18 month / 24,000 km warranty and no doubt, Tata should offer an extended warranty once the car hits the roads in volumes. There are also plenty of accessories we are told, right from waistline-moulding to alloy wheels and stereo systems which will be available at the dealer level.

Overall, the Nano has managed to deliver what it was envisaged to do and has brought another of Mr. Tata’s dreams to reality. It now remains to be seen whether the Indian masses fall in love with this little car, as we have. Yes, it has some rough edges and there’s always scope for improvement, but when was the last time the world press and manufacturers gawked at an Indian car that has achieved what many thought was an impossible task. To use but a cliché, Tata with its Nano has proved that good things can indeed come in small packages.