Tata Nano

Even after the launch in 2008, the Nano has been a work in progress for Tata Motors. Where it could have been tagged as a convenient city car, the Nano became rather infamous as the ‘cheapest car’ that few wanted to associate with. Six years and many iterations later, it seems that Tata has finally got the formula right. The Nano GenX with the automatic transmission, on paper, looks like a perfect package offering brilliant driving dynamics, convenience and also a respectable features list. We drove the new car in and around Pune city to find out if the GenX Nano is all you need as an everyday city commuter.

The Nano is a study in contradictions. It was originally conceived to be the poor man’s car, but the poor man doesn’t have a car in our country. Not yet. It met all the things it promised – it was good-looking, cheap, seated four six-footers in comfort, and, accounting for all the things that went against it like a fluctuating Rupee and having to move a completely built factory across the breadth of the country, it miraculously managed to stay within sight of its intended target price. Even so, it hasn’t racked up the numbers that Tata Motors expected. Here, then, is the 2013 Tata Nano with the electronic power steering that promises to make up for the shortcomings of the previous model.