India's iconic Ambassador car brand is sold to Peugeot

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38945674

by happy-go-lucky • 9 years ago

95 55 9 years ago

bbc.com

unmole2• 9 years ago

the Ambassador was for three decades India's bestselling car

That's because there were no other manufacturers.

happy-go-lucky2• 9 years ago

There were: Sipani Automobiles Ltd. and Maruti Udyog Limited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maruti_Suzuki

unmole2• 9 years ago

Maruti was founded in 1981 and it was the beginning of the end for the Ambassador. Premier was a much bigger player than Sipani.

IgorPartola• 9 years ago

I was going to ask that. 20k sales per year in a country with 1b people seems really low.

happy-go-lucky2• 9 years ago

It was so low because of the per capita income that was equally low, and looking into reasons for such a disproportion would lead to a wide-ranging discussion.

chrismorgan• 9 years ago

In cities like Kolkata the taxi fleet is Ambassadors. I don’t know what the average age of the vehicles is, but they almost always feel as old as they look.

For all its faults, the Ambassador is a robust vehicle.

bbgm• 9 years ago

Times have changed a lot. It wasn't until the 90s that the average middle class family could afford a car. The father bought his first car at about the same time I did, except he was 50 and I had just started grad school in the US.

Cars were definitely a luxury item while I was growing up. Better incomes, more choice, ability to get car loans, etc have made cars the norm now (in big cities at least).

nautical• 9 years ago

Ambassador and Maruti are very popular Indian cars . Ambassador being the car used by almost all government officials .

currywurst• 9 years ago

I'm really impressed with the new Peugot 3008 i-Cockpit system [https://youtu.be/5UapzN65V7Q?t=1m16s] and the general interior design. IMHO way ahead of the competition.

This is a really surprising development! The Peugeot leadership seems to be unafraid to think different, and I think great things are in store for the Ambassador brand. It was totally neglected for decades.

sreenadh• 9 years ago

I am hoping that Contessa also comes back.

izacus• 9 years ago

I've tested the new Peugeot 508 and 307 and they had horrible infotainment software - slow, buggy and very illogical (some settings couldn't be controled from steering wheel, some settings were only available on the screen on the dashboard, etc.)

The fact that 307 got rid of climate control buttons and only had the settings on the laggy touchscreen was even worse.

Did 3008 really improve that much in this regard?

ptaipale8• 9 years ago

307 isn't particularly new, though. Production ended in 2007 (except in South America and China).

I agree that putting controls behind a touch screen is not nice. Especially in the winter where I live, they're impossible - they don't work in the cold, with gloves.

sz4kerto• 9 years ago

I have no problem with Peugeots in general, but the 3008 has a particularly problematic driving assist system -- it is actually dangerous.

JumpCrisscross3• 9 years ago

To what degree did India mortgage its industrial future in its protectionist era?

sdfaasdf3• 9 years ago

Take a guess. China, India had similar GDP per-capita figures in late 70s (Korea was poorer at one point). India never suffered from war and dictatorial madness like Korea and China, yet today India has < 1/5 GDP of China, and about ~< 2x the GDP of S.Korea (with 10-20x the population).

All this for what ? Some anti-colonial revolution ? Nope. India has almost completely ignored everything Indian, if not actively tried to destroy its traditions/languages/cultures and has ran after who ever would care to smooch over its "elite". India is as much a British colony today (if not more) than it ever was.

throwaway2048• 9 years ago

Add into this that the country has a huge amount of english speakers, and is also a democracy.

chimeracoder• 9 years ago

India never suffered from war

After Independence and Partition? India never had to deal with war??

gime_tree_fiddy2• 9 years ago

Just to be clear, are you blaming protectionism ?

oarla• 9 years ago

Not sure if it is fair to compare India and China/Korea. I don't know much about the history of China and Korea, but I doubt if both those countries faced full scale colonialism like India did. Recovering from the devastation caused by 200+ years of colonial rule takes a while.

S.Korea particularity benefitted from the Korean war. USA stepped in and boosted it's economy.

sremani• 9 years ago

There are lot of things contributing to this mismanagement

Unlike China and Korea, India is not ethnically and culturally cohesive (I know China is a bit more diverse but not to levels of India).

The Economic Reforms started in 1991 soon lost stream by mid-2000s and there we no policy cohesion for reforms

Colonial two step, every Indian will not miss a chance to say how many official languages are there in India, but Indian economy discriminates against non-english languages, esp. in a set up where majority of public education is non-english. The effort of language development outside of Hindi is a state's mission, which itself has two or more official languages outside of English. So, only 20-30% of people who are educated in English medium has the ability to fully participate in the economy etc.

The point is India will straddle along, the West and South will lead the economic growth, where as North and East will drag along, and there is nothing changing in the near future.

Think China and India like the Hare and the Tortoise, China did the miraculous fast run esp. from late 90s to 2012 (when the miracle actually ran out of steam), and India will staddle and move along at 4-7% with ebbs and flows and will catch-up say, in 2050 (its my pure guess).

taneq2• 9 years ago

I wonder if any of that $12 million will go to paying out the workers who were left stranded by the company? If the linked story (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36044903) is anything to go by, the employees got severely screwed when the plant shut down.

dominotw• 9 years ago

the employees got severely screwed when the plant shut down.

Isn't that the case everywhere? Why do these workers in particular deserve 'pay outs'?

These workers seemed to have got screwed by the globalisation like people from soviet union who had no idea how to make sense of the new world where govt is not resposible to provide you with a job anymore.

taneq2• 9 years ago

Well there's this guy:

Nirmal Kumar Ram, who worked at the factory's engine plant, says he has not yet left his job because Hindustan Motors has still not told workers that they were fired.

Instead of communicating with the employees they just kind of forgot about them.

And this guy:

"Even before production stopped, I didn't get my salary for six months."

The company wasn't paying the employees, of course it's impossible to know what was said but you wouldn't think that he'd be waiting around for six months unpaid if they weren't telling him it was coming.

ptaipale8• 9 years ago

That article doesn't tell me that the employees would have been defrauded or somehow deceived by their employer. Rather than selling out too soon, it seems that the Hindustan company tried to stay in its old ways for far too long.

jamescun• 9 years ago

The Ambassador is based on the Morris Oxford, a British car from the 1950s, and I am fascinated that they never felt any pressure to update the design (although if I recall correctly in the early 2000s they replaced the original British Motor Company 1.5L with an Isuzu 1.6L).

ptaipale8• 9 years ago

In a planned, protectionist economy, without competition, there was little need to develop or improve.

gumby• 9 years ago

I am fascinated that they never felt any pressure to update the design

What slander, Ambassador issued updated models from time to time, changing the shape of the headlamps and the like!

jdietrich• 9 years ago

Royal Enfield still do good business in India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Enfield_(India)

ganeshkrishnan• 9 years ago

It's funny and coincidental that many years ago Peugot ran this ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcVyz-fZIzg

The car that is being molded is Ambassador

ptaipale8• 9 years ago

The news also instantly reminded me of this ad.

riteshkpr• 9 years ago

I know which ad you're referring to. Don't have to click this link, it was a catchy one!

sdfaasdf3• 9 years ago

Has Peugeot lost its mind ? This is like buying the brand name of TVS XL 100 or Kinetic Luna. The French must be drunk over after the Dassault rip-off they pulled off.

nojvek• 9 years ago

For $12m it seems like a bargain.

technologia• 9 years ago

I remember riding in this vehicle and feeling the number of things that went wrong in their construction. Honestly its hard to extricate such a POS car from my memories in India.

Shivetya• 9 years ago

there is a lot of manufacturing taking place in India by very large brands and some of it for export. Motorcycles and such are being built there for export by brands even as iconic as BMW and Harley Davidson.

So buying up an already established brand is probably cheaper than building the factory (new construction, bribes, etc) to get manufacturing capacity where labor is cheap

ptaipale8• 9 years ago

This is a good point. If you want to access the Indian market, your problem probably isn't building a plant, or finding competent labour, or buying materials or logistics. It is the licenses and permissions to operate, and the relations to government officials. And if you can purchase an existing outfit that has at least some of the needed licenses and permissions and has some existing government contacts, contracts and agreements, then it is easier to ramp up business.

prodmerc• 9 years ago

So what? Tata Motors owns Jaguar, Fiat owns Jeep, BMW owns the Mini, I don't see anything interesting here...

ceocoder• 9 years ago

The handbrake rarely worked properly - instead
spawning a generation of drivers that could easily
do hill starts deftly balancing the accelerator and brake

That'd be me. When I bought my Mitsubishi Lancer Hatchback with manual transmission in the US, having a working handbrake was a jarring experience. My friends spent a lot of time helping me break my habit of using gas and brake pedals for keeping the car balanced up hill - I can still do it well.

I'd like to note that this feature wasn't exclusively limited to Ambassadors, my dad owned a Maruti 800[1], and a Fiat Padmini[2], neither of those had working handbrakes AND my dad managed to install aftermarket LGP kit in former and a datsun diesel engine in latter. Both modifications made it an interesting driving experience. These days when I'm driving my automatic transmission car on a freeway with no potholes, cows, I do get some flashbacks of driving in pouring rain with water creeping up from floor and being scared out of my wits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maruti_800

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Padmini

Mikeb853• 9 years ago

That'd be me. When I bought my Mitsubishi Lancer Hatchback with manual transmission in the US, having a working handbrake was a jarring experience. My friends spent a lot of time helping me break my habit of using gas and brake pedals for keeping the car balanced up hill - I can still do it well.

You mean people actually use the handbrake for hill starts with a manual? I thought it was just something you do when first learning. I've always found it more difficult to coordinate everything with the handbrake, I can operate all the pedals quick enough anyway. The only time I use the handbrake really is for sliding around :-)

lmm• 9 years ago

No, it's something you're taught to do generally. It's going to be 3 inputs either way (accel, brake, clutch - 4 if you count steering), most people find it easier to do them independently with two feet and one hand than to have one foot do two inputs.

hlidotbe• 9 years ago

The first time I used a car with hill assist I wondered why the car wouldn't start. Seems the assist was slower than me at the brake-clutch-accelerator game.

wazoox• 9 years ago

With modern, powerful cars, using the handbrake really is unnecessary. However until recently many European cars had only a handful of HP and incredibly low torque compared to modern diesels... Citroën 2CV: 12 to 21 HP DIN. VW Beetle: 34 to 50 HP. Even a "sport" car like a Golf GTI was 110 HP only in the 80s. The torque was also much lower.

grecy• 9 years ago

You mean people actually use the handbrake for hill starts with a manual? I thought it was just something you do when first learning. I've always found it more difficult to coordinate everything with the handbrake, I can operate all the pedals quick enough anyway.

Your comment makes me think you've never had to do a hill start on a sufficiently steep hill with a sufficiently heavy vehicle. I don't care how fast you are moving your foot from the brake to the accelerator, you will roll backwards. Not to mention the wear you're putting on the clutch, which again, won't take that kind of abuse in a heavy vehicle.

cardiffspaceman• 9 years ago

I was not "taught" much to do with a manual transmission, but now I think I have a pretty good grasp of it. I've never done a hand-brake turn though. At first, I even struggled because the brief instruction I had had was from a used-car salesman and I barely learned enough to get my first manual transmission-equipped car off that lot. But I learned hand-brake hill-holding and foot-brake hill-holding, eventually, by trying them out when consequence-free opportunities presented themselves. There is a maneuver in turns, when you might need to make a gear change in a turn, that calls for manipulating the brakes, clutch and gas in coordination with the gear change, so the hand brake in that situation would not be right and your hands are full anyway. The goal of this maneuver is to maintain smooth momentum and change gears. So I think people should learn all the techniques.

korginator• 9 years ago

I don't get it. What is the point of this purchase?

India's iconic Ambassador car brand is sold to Peugeot

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