CLASSIC CARS DOWN THE YEARS Top to bottom: Ford Model T — 1908 Volkswagen Beetle — 1938 Morris Mini Classic — 1958 Swatch-Mercedes Smart — 1998 Tata Nano — 2008

In early 2003, five engineers from Tata Motors trooped into the main conference room at Bombay House, the Victorian sandstone building that houses the headquarters of the Tata Group. They had been summoned at a day’s notice from the Tata Motors factory in Pune by company Chairman Ratan N. Tata, who had just made a promise the world said would be ‘impossible’ to keep.

Tata had told a Financial Times correspondent on the sidelines of the Geneva Auto Show that he was thinking of making a car that would cost about € 2,000. Adjusted against the then exchange rate of the rupee, that translated to Rs 1 lakh. Tata says he had never really defined the project in his head exclusively by its pricing. “It was the media that said it,” says Tata. “But we decided to accept the challenge….” With that resolution, Tata imprisoned himself and his engineers in a promise to fulfil which they would have to all but rewrite the principles of automotive engineering.

When the engineers walked into the conference room that morning, they knew that the meeting had something to do with Tata’s statement about a small car that they vaguely remembered reading about in newspapers a few days ago. Little did they realise then that the next four years of their lives would be dotted with moments of agonising failure and heady success, between which they would eat, drink and catch up with their families. The worst: the engineers would not be able to share with anyone, even their wives, what was going on inside their second home, the drab block of concrete called Engineering Research Centre (ERC) at Tata Motors’ campus on the outskirts of Pune.

Jai Bolar, senior manager for development at Tata Motors’ ERC, recalls that the team entered the conference room armed with just a 60-slide presentation on all the low-cost modes of personal transport. The vehicles included motorbikes, autorickshaws, scooters and the company’s own Indica. “We had no clue as to what we were supposed to do,’’ says Bolar. “So finally, we asked him whether he could tell us what he had in mind.”

The next few minutes will, forever, be imprinted on the team’s mind. Tata, or RNT as he is affectionately called, held forth, exhorting the team to dream of building a low-cost car that would cost only marginally more than a two-wheeler and revolutionise personal transport in India. Show the world what Indian engineering is truly capable of, RNT told the engineers. “Make me also part of the team. Only in a country like India or Pakistan can a low-cost car be made,’’ he insisted.

The motivational talk worked. “We came back from the meeting all charged up,’’ says Nagabhushan R. Gubbi, head of engineering for passenger cars. Gubbi did not know, nor did the others, that they had just been impelled by arguably India’s most visionary businessman to create history.