Now, shell out Rs 80,000 more for a designer Nano

The designer Nano will hit the streets soon. The world’s cheapest car has generated interest of designers like Dilip Chhabria and former Maruti Suzuki India chief Jagdish Khattar, both of whom are working on a re-designed avatar of the car.

The new stylised Nano is likely to hit the streets soon after the car’s original variant rolls out from the Sanand plant in a few months from now.

“We have retained the original look but have made it more stylish. One can spend a premium of Rs 80,000 over the car to get the new look,” said Chhabria, the promoter of Dilip Chhabria Design and a leading automobile designer in the country. He added, “We plan to sell at least a couple of hundred designer Nanos.”

Dilip Chhabria’s DC Design and Jagdish Khattar’s Carnation Auto, a multi-brand automobile solutions hub, entered into a partnership in September this year for providing car customisation kits at 11 Carnation outlets in India.

Khattar’s Carnation is into the business of selling used-cars and multi-brand accessories, apart from offering servicing and repairs.

The venture has come up with four modified car models. Innova’s fully-customised kit will come at Rs 495,000, while semi-customised kits of the Swift, the Honda City and the Nano will cost between Rs 45,000-80,000.

“We are looking at offering these retrofits for modified cars across eight cities,” Chhabria said. Carnation’s engineers can assemble the kits across individual outlets, which helps in reducing logistics costs. He was talking at the sidelines of the launch of his latest design, a 25-feet limousine built on the Sonata platform for Ahmedabad-based Yogi Auto Care.

Chhabria has designed over 2,000 cars in his one-and-a-half decade career, of which he claims around 600 are exclusive in design.

His company designs 60-80 cars in a year, but he is expecting to deliver around 200-300 cars this fiscal on account of increasing interest in customised cars as lifestyle products.