Tata’s Nano Comes to the Big Apple

Nano Takes a Bow

There it stood in all its bright yellow glory, an icon of style, right in the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design on Fifth Avenue! Yes, the Tata Nano is causing a buzz in Manhattan as museum goers circle it and peer at its many features, its cute shape and its various assets. There was a rope around it and no one was allowed to touch it, giving it even more of a celebrity status.

One can just see it on the streets of Manhattan, squeezing into non-existent parking spots and saving New Yorkers a lot of fuel. However, that’s a long way off – it’s here simply as a museum highlight. Having already earned its spurs as the world’s most affordable car at an unbelievable $2500, it can be seen at the museum till April 25, 2010. Right next to it is an image of an entire Indian family on a two-wheeler scooter, they are the  ones who will benefit from the Nano. No more cramped, dangerous rides or getting caught in sudden rain showers!

“Cooper-Hewitt’s mission is to present the very latest developments in design and technology and the Tata Nano introduces more families in India to the new world of affordable and safer mobility,” said Cara McCarty, curatorial director of the museum. “We’re eager to display the Tata Nano at the museum, where many visitors will see it for the first time.”

Nano means small in Gujarati (Nando in Sindhi and Nanne in Hindi have the same root and meaning) but this gutsy little car can take in 5 adults and looks pretty spacious. There are diagrams and photos showing the development of Ratan Tata’s People car. Here are some details from those notes:

*This ultra-cheap compact car contributes to the world of affordable motoring, and like its predecessors, Henry Ford’s Model T, the Volkswagen Beetle, Citroen 2CV and the original Fiat 500, the Tata Nano continues the tradition of inexpensive cars made in large numbers.

* Conceived by Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, the Tata Nano is intended as an all-weather form of personal transportation that provides a safer and cleaner alternative to the two-wheelers that are pervasive in India, where often entire families ride clinging to a motorbike or a scooter.

* The Nano offers a high fuel efficiency of 50 miles per gallon, making it more fuel efficient and less polluting than all other cars on the road today in India.

* Designed by a team of 500 Indian engineers, the 35-horsepower, four-door vehicle has been pared down to the essentials: It is about10 feet long, weighs approximately 1,300 pounds, has an all-sheet-metal body, a rear two-cylinder engine, small tubeless tires, a reinforced passenger compartment, crumple zones, seat belts and achieves a top speed of 65 miles per hour.

* To allay concerns about safety, the car passed a roll-over test and offset impact, which are not regulated in India. Its barebones design, as of now, does not include more costly features such as power steering, air bags, antilock brakes or an exterior left passenger-side mirror, which are not mandatory in India.

* Tata Motors is currently developing versions of the Nano for European and American markets.

Museum-goers seemed pretty impressed as they examined the Nano on a recent Saturday afternoon.   “It’s going to make transportation available to a lot of people who didn’t have it possible – it’s also going to increase pollution and affect global warming,” observed Alan Schlissel, a software engineer who was checking out the exhibit.  “You’re rolling out transportation to hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn’t be driving otherwise, so it’s going to encourage people to do more riding and encourage the use of more gasoline.”

He then added the all-important factor: “But it does improve people’s standard of living so it’s good and bad at the same time. It’s quite an engineering feat and they could sell quite a few of them in this country!”

So head out to the Cooper-Hewitt to check out Ratan Tata’s little powerhouse, a people’s car which will bring comfort to many families.