Tata and its local distributor, Fusion Automotive, share plans to bring passenger cars to the Australian market, but don't hold your breath.
The first of a new generation of Tata passenger cars could be as far away as five years into the future, according to Fusion Automotive MD, Darren Bowler and Tata Motors head of International Business, RT Wasan.
Both men spoke with motoring.com.au yesterday, outlining the state of play for the Indian automotive brand in Australia and its non-commercial products.
"For us there are passenger cars available right now that we could pick and choose from," Bowler began. "But for us it's gotta meet the criteria of safety and value for money. So if we're bringing a car into this market, which is the most competitive market in the world, as we know, it's got to be the right product; it's got to be the right fit for the Australian consumer.
"There is a huge opportunity for us in the next five years, with passenger cars. But it's gotta be the right passenger car.
"A lot of people have asked about Tata Nano: 'When are you bringing that to Australia? When are you going to sell that?'
"Tata Nano was the people's car of India; it was designed and built for the Indian market. We're not going to have that car in Australia."
Nor will Fusion bring the Tata Safari here either.
"The Safari has the same drivetrain [as the Xenon], but a different platform," Wasan explained. "It's a completely new model now... this was introduced about a year and a half ago in India.
"We are evaluating the options that we have..."
But subsequently Bowler poured cold water on the SUV reaching our shores.
"At the moment there's no plan for it," he said. "It wasn't package-protected from a safety point of view, for what we need."
Bowler more or less left the door open for a future Safari to return to Australia, but it would have to be a major upgrade of the existing car or an all-new model, which would be some years away given the current model has only been in the market for the past 18 months.
There is a future in store for Tata's passenger-carrying cars in Australia however. The Nexon concept (pictured) that debuted in Delhi earlier this year will form the basis (through its modular platform) for a raft of new passenger car models over the next five years or so. "That car is the future of passenger cars within Tata Motors globally; there's an opportunity for us within that – and we can feed in, to the Tata Motors team, what we need in that car," Bowler said.
What the local distributor wants in any future Tata passenger vehicle product are "key features like airbags, ESC, automatic transmission... but also at the price point where we need to be as well."
What is also imperative to Australian consumers is quality fit and finish. The Indian brand has been building vehicles since 1945, but it has been a manufacturer of passenger vehicles for less than 20 years. In earlier years, before Fusion took over distribution of the brand, Tata – represented in Australia by the Telcoline pick-up – was not well regarded for build quality or durability.
Since then, however, Tata has acquired two new business units that have grappled with build quality over a much longer period than Tata has been manufacturing passenger vehicles – Jaguar and Land Rover. This acquisition has yielded new insights into quality assurance, according to Bowler and Wasan.
"One of the biggest advantages we have had with the JLR [Jaguar Land Rover] association now is that a lot of these [quality control] systems are being taken from JLR. And we also have people from JLR helping [our] back end," Wasan explained.
Product planning and program management processes established by JLR are being swiftly adopted by Tata. One of the new processes is named FMQ – Forward Model Quality – Wasan said, and all new models under development "are going through this kind of process."
The level of quality control cross-pollination between JLR and Tata is not widely understood by outsiders. According to Bowler it's most apparent in the lunchroom at Tata's Pune plant, where Xenon pick-up and the Land Rover Freelander are both assembled.
"I've been in India and... I've sat in the lunchroom [at the plant at Pune]; the amount of English accents that are in that particular lunchroom... where these people are engineers from JLR feeding that knowledge, that experience into production capability, into processing, into purchasing, into quality.
Not all the QA initiatives have come from JLR however. Before his untimely death earlier this year, Tata Motors MD Karl Slym introduced 'Horizon Next' – based on four pillars: intense customer focus, world-class manufacturing, world-class sales experience, world-class service experience.
"All of those pillars I've seen over the last three years really lift [the brand's quality]," Bowler said.