SKIRMISHER

With a price tag equivalent to about “the price of the optional DVD player on the Lexus LX 470 sport utility vehicle,” Tata Motors’ $2500 car is the world’s cheapest, and it’s easy to see in the figure above that it’s not exactly the safest/fastest ride around.

Some of the few people who have seen the car describe a tiny, charming, four-door, five-seater hatchback shaped like a jelly bean, small in the front and broad in the back, the better to reduce wind resistance and permit a cheaper engine. “It’s a nice car — cute,” said A. K. Chaturvedi, senior vice president of business development at Lumax Industries, a supplier in Delhi that developed the car’s headlights and interior lamps.

Driving the cost-cutting were Tata’s engineers, who in an earlier project questioned whether their trucks really needed all four brake pads or could make do with three. As they built Tata’s new car, for about half the price of the next-cheapest Indian alternative, their guiding philosophy was: Do we really need that?

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