My congratulations to Tata - this is what the car makers should be making. Sadly we will never see this car in Europe (except perhaps as used imports once they get older) because it will never meet Euro crash legislation, which has become so restrictive that the manufacturers can never produce a truly economical car here.
The daft thing is, you can sell a motorcycle that will do 180mph with no seat belts, no airbags, no crumple zones etc, but you can't sell a car that will only do 50mph unless it has all of these things. A senior exec at a major European car maker told me recently that there are now so many airbags in their modern cars that if they all went off at once, the air pressure could burst a baby's eardrums. They're waiting with trepidation for the first lawsuit in USA on that one... The reason that there are so many airbags, incidentally, is not that the car makers want them - it's that the buying public place so much store by the Euro NCAP ratings, and to get a top rating you have to have them... Legislation stifles innovation and progress, sadly!
Malcolm
