Designing India's first supercar
Indian automotive design firm DC Design has announced it is building India's first "supercar." The company will unveil its plans at the 2012 Auto Expo in New Delhi, on view from January 7-11.
"It will offer the looks, feel, dimensions, quality and fit and finish comparable to supercars from Lamborghini and Ferrari, minus the horsepower," DC Design spokesperson Dilip Chhabria said in a report published by India's Business Standard newspaper on December 31.
In that report, Business Standard journalist Srinivas Krishnan writes that the car's engine is expected to be a V6 engine sourced from Honda and that its silhouette and styling will likely resemble those of a Lamborghini Murcielago or Aventador.
DC Design plans to offer 300 of the cars by 2013, and the cost would be about $56,000 -- "an attractive price point," as Chhabria said in the Business Standard article. That's far lower than the price of a new Lamborghini Aventador, which, according to Motor Trend magazine, costs $387,000 for a 2012 model.
Primarily a design firm, DC Design plans to manufacture the car itself within India--an ambitious and admirable goal. The company plans eventually to scale up production to offer 3,000 vehicles for sale.
How will DC Design's attempt at creating an inexpensive yet sophisticated-looking sports car in India, for Indians play out? After all, Tata Motors' Nano, an earlier--yet very different--example of a low-cost Indian car is not living up to its hype in sales, according to analyses in publications such as The Technology Review. Of course the $2,400 Nano, launched in 2009, was meant to appeal to India's masses, while DC Design's 'supercar' is obviously meant to be perceived of as a luxury auto, with clearly a much more exclusive target market. However, critics of the Nano cite the stigma of an intentionally cheap car designed to appeal to those who can't afford other models as a possible reason why it's not catching on with low-income drivers. One can only imagine how such a stigma might affect high-income ones.
Image: dcdesign.co.in
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com