WHAT INDIAN'S ARE MISSING OUT!!

Nicely put Rohit.

Adding to it there will be pricing issues.

Also, indians are more inclined to look at FE more than performance/looks(although it is changing a lil bit).

I guess its also a case import v/s local manufacture. If those very cars are manufactured in India, I guess they will become cheaper...but the question is why will a manufacturer do that? If a sexy car is sold in US/Europe, why will manufacturers make those in India for the sake of making them affordable to Indians?

Government policy(taxes)

Need for tooling

-these would be the killjoys!

tooling????

Ameen have a look at this

Speaking of a market in India - less than 2% of the Indian population owns an automobile. So the untapped market is huge. Currently, the taxes and import duties protect the Indian manufacturer and serve as a carrot to foreign manufacturers to set up shop in India. It is a smart thing - as it generates employment and provides an opportunity to tap the Indian market.

Also it is one of the areas where ppl/company/dealers give proper taxes. ;)

@Binoy: Things are going over my head. I just want to know why 'tooling' in this context. Please......

Well Ameen, I guess Binoy's referring to the manufacturing capabilities in India. In developed countries, the machinery available is definitely much more advanced (automated with robots and computer controlled, less requirement for manual labour) than that available here. Here we still have manual labour as a major part of car making - and this cannot be easily dispensed off with given the loss of jobs (and consequent union resistance) that will happen. Automation automatically means less requirement of manual labour. Good examples are tasks like cutting, drilling, welding, painting, sheet forming, etc. - if these are automated then the only people required will be for operating the robots (which is mostly feeding in CAD/CAM designs to the computers controlling them) that carry out these tasks. Add to that design & research facilities - the west definitely scores here.

To put it simply there are two ways to sell cars in India

1)CBU's-completely built units-whole car as such is shipped to India and sold-not at all cost effective(all the high end luxuary cars are sold like this-also the Fiat 500)

2)Locally made-ie a factory will have to be setup-this includes body panel press-assembly lines/weilding robots etc-this is known as 'tooling'-ie setting up 'machines'/infrastructure to make machines(here cars!)-this is very cost effective in the long run and for high volumes.

-not so if the numbers planned to be sold is limited-so 'tooling' requires a lot of initial expenditure-but the rewards are there to reap in the long run

-as an example TATA had to dismantle the plant at Singur and transport everything to Gujarat-so essentially it was a 'retool'.

Danx - Rohit & Binoy