End of the road

The tragedy of the Ambassador

The decision by Hindustan Motors, India's oldest car maker, to stop production of its iconic Ambassador marks the end of an era stretching back several decades, depicting and explaining why the Indian economy has been compared in the past to an elephant that is slow to move. Hindustan Motors, powered mainly by the Ambassador, based on the British Morris Oxford, led in car sales till the 1980s, when the Maruti 800 arrived to change the Indian automobile landscape and punish those who refused to change. Ironically, the Maruti 800 left India's roads even before the Ambassador. The Ambassador began rolling out of its plant near Kolkata in 1958. At its peak, the company sold 24,000 cars in a year. As with many large companies whose major manufacturing centre lends its name to the destination that grows up around it, Hindmotor railway station served the car plant as Tatanagar catered to the steel mill. But that is where the comparison ends. Tata Steel began modernising from the early 1980s and was ready to catch the bus when steel prices were decontrolled a decade later. Hindustan Motors, belonging to the B M Birla group, technologically largely stayed where it was and began losing out when the Indian economy began opening up from 1980 onwards.

The Ambassador's life span of more than half a century can be divided into two equal parts. During the first half it dominated the roads because official policy under the licence-permit raj did not allow the import of technology, not to speak of entire cars, as these were considered a luxury in a poor country. This allowed its maker to exploit to the hilt its one big advantage: It was incredibly roomy inside. So it served the needs of large Indian families and also taxis (Kolkata's streets are still filled with yellow-top Ambassador cabs) which had to carry a lot of passengers and luggage. Simultaneously its size made it the official car which senior bureaucrats and ministers used for long until relatively higher-end cars became common on Indian roads. When Ratan Tata outlined his vision for India's own car, one of the attributes he chose for it was "the Ambassador's internal dimensions".

How India's economic policies set it back and made it lose the industrial advantage it originally had is illustrated by comparative car manufacturing numbers for the early decades after Independence. In 1950 neither China nor South Korea produced any cars at all, whereas India clocked 14,688. In 1960, South Korea still had not arrived and China with a production figure of 22,574 was still way behind India's 51,136. By 1970, India had fallen behind China but was still ahead of South Korea and by 1980 it had lost the lead to both. Last year (2013) China produced 22 million cars, South Korea 4.5 million and India 3.9 million. Today car output figures are no longer unquestioningly used as a benchmark for economic progress. The need to tackle automobile pollution which contributes to climate change has shifted the emphasis from private cars to public transport. But the automobile industry with its long supply chain remains a major creator of manufacturing jobs, thus retaining the relevance of car production figures.

Sadly, the era in which the Ambassador dominated India's roads was also the one in which it lost the crucial head start that would have let it create a vibrant manufacturing sector. The nostalgia associated with the Ambassador should not conceal what it represents: the vast missed opportunities and pervasive mediocrities of the licence-permit raj.