Is it a car or a golf cart?

Industrialized nations that have launched themselves into the automotive age have most always done so by introducing a cheap, simple, reliable machine that put the car within reach of average working people. Ours was the Ford Model T that took motoring out of the hands of the rich.

India rather skipped a step in that process by mastering the urban dark arts of pollution before building a car that was within reach of the great mass of its people. That, it appears, is about to change with the introduction of a car that will retail for a base price of $2,500.

Do not expect it in American car showrooms anytime soon. For one thing, it hasn’t a prayer of meeting our crash-and-emission standards; for another, it may be a little too minimalist for American motorists.

Budgetmobile

The budgetmobile by India’s Tata Motors has no radio, power steering, power windows or air conditioning, only three instruments on the dash, a single windshield wiper, a belt-drive transmission, no trunk to speak of and cheap bearings that begin to wear out if the driver exceeds 44 mph, not that there’s a lot of danger of that with a 30 horsepower motor.

But, as any impecunious American college student will confirm, any car is better than no car, and a true people’s car could reach sales of Model T proportions in India.

Not to disparage the development of the car — an automotive anything that sells for $2,500 is quite a feat indeed — but what seems to have happened is that Tata’s engineers, in a land without fairways and retirement communities, have independently discovered the golf cart.

Scripps Howard News Service