All new cars today are very reliable and offer good support in service and spare parts

Cheap small cars have been the `Holy Grail’ of most carmakers. War ravaged Europe produced Volkswagen Beatle in Germany, Citroen 2CV in France, Fiat 500 in Italy and Mini in UK. Japanese auto-makers made a number of 660 cc `K’cars of which one evolved to become the iconic Maruti 800 that ruled the Indian sub-continent from 1983 till 1998 when crash safety and pollution concerns made it obsolete. But it continued to morph into Zen, Wagon R and Alto variants that continued to dominate the market.

In 1998, Hyundai the big Korean automaker gave Maruti their greatest challenge with their very successful Santro that was soon followed by Daewoo Matiz and a slightly bigger Tata Indica. Daewoo died but the other carmakers jostled for dominance of the `Hatchback segment that commanded some 75 per cent car sales. These hatchbacks offered adequate inner space for four passengers at the sacrifice of a little baggage space. Toyota and Honda concentrated on bigger cars while the American and European carmakers like GM, Ford, Renault (and Nissan) belatedly entered the segment with

bigger hatchbacks.

Maruti as the market leader continued to define the ‘hatchback’ segment with constant innovations. In 1995, they

added larger Swift model with more powerful petrol and diesel engines to their popular Alto. These redefined the hatchback segment and its increased space and convenience began to make inroads into the larger sedan segment as well. Aggressive competitors threw in a number of challengers but Maruti responded with changes on engines and styling to keep ahead of the race. They also introduced a smaller ‘A-Star’ to penetrate into a lower price segment but it was not very successful. Their pretty little Celerio however proved a greater success.

Hyundai’s tall and jaunty Santro proved to be a very durable competitor and continued to sell despite the entry of many new competitors but new models were clearly needed. Then Hyundai introduced a range of great new cars with the elegant `fluidic’ design motif including the small i10 and larger i20 hatchbacks. These were both very visually appealing and well endowed with excellent diesel and petrol engines and many other very attractive features. To compete with the A-Star and Celerio they also introduced a smaller Eon model.

Tata Motors had been quite successful with their Indica variants that were spacious and reliable but they began to be considered as rather lacking in refinement that increasingly discriminating buyers were demanding. Their new models like the Bolt were a huge improvement but most buyers were not willing to forget the old Tata image. It takes a very long time to build a good image but a lost image is very difficult to repair. Tata’s most successful hatchback is now the baby Nano. Though this model had been wrongly positioned as a `cheap’ car the new model with power steering, a bigger fuel tank, glove compartments, boot lid, et cetera, is a very cute and good little car. So much so that I have personally bought one to complement my bigger Toyota Altis. It is not too good on highways but is a perfect city car with good inner space, pick up and air-conditioning and is very easy to park.

All new cars today are very reliable and offer good support in service and spare parts and all of them, including the hatchbacks, are now offering many attractive extras like sophisticated music systems, GPS navigation, keyless entry, sunroofs et cetera. Even automatic gears are available on several hatchbacks and the low cost automatic manual transmission (AMT) is a huge convenience in traffic at an affordable cost. They are very reliable and do not much affect your fuel bills.

(The author is the region’s most celebrated automobile columnist)