Change isn’t new, it’s just gotten noisier. As of late, change has gone from being a subtler detail in our world’s landscape to the prevailing point of reference. Change has become the idiom, the alarm, the opportunity. We who are at the mercy of the automotive industry must change, we have learned, because economies are changing, mindsets are changing, consumers’ behaviors are changing. We must be inspired and innovative and creative, and we must be realistic.
So what sort of newfound, four-wheeled paradigm might all this culminate in? The gas-saving hybrid? Eh… The availably more affordable and space-conscious Smart Car? Possibly. How about the 54 mile per gallon, teeny tiny, bare-bones featured NANO? Bingo! Want to know why? Because you can snag one for 2500 bucks! Well, that is if you live in India.
Tata Motors' $2,500 NANO
Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile company, is releasing this 5-passenger pellet at an event in Mumbai on March 23rd. But what if the NANO came to America? Sure, we’d have to cough up some of our needless consumerist cravings and forgo the feasts of vehicular features we’ve come to demand. But, hasn’t the American been forced to cut back in this area lately anyway?
For $2,500, almost everyone here could afford a NANO. And if everyone could afford one, almost everyone would buy one (it’s a 2500 dollar car, people!), which would mean less of us afraid to buzz around in these bite-sized buggies, which would mean even more people snatching one up. And could you even remotely imagine Honda, Toyota, Ford or GM letting NANOs domineer our roads and driveways? Heck no, for Change’s sake! They’d bang their fists on the boardroom tables, whip out the blueprints and get cracking on their version of the oh-so-cheerfully cheap $2,500 automobile.
I’m no economist, but to me that sounds like jobs, cash-flow, advertising and more financial wiggle room for us all. That’d be quite a nice change, now wouldn’t it?