Reverse colonization -India's growing economic clout in Britain

I have recently been testing my hypothesis with various friends that what we are looking at now is a reverse colonization. I don't have all the facts on my fingertips here, but what is well known is that quite a few of the richest people in Britain today are of Indian origin. Now with Tata's of India taking over he only two remaining British automobile icons - Jaguar and Land Rover, the hypothesis is getting an additional shot in the arm.

Click here for details from Autoblog.

The Indian $2,500 car - 30 years too late

The time for a people's car in India was way back in the 70's. At that time, a genuine attempt but by a corrupt political administration resulted in a prototype - kinda based on the Citroen and Volkswagen model after the second world war. However, it really came to fruition in the mid-eighties when Indian government collaborated with Japanese car maker - Suzuki to start the largest car manufacturing plant in India. The price at that time was maybe around $2,000 - but the real wages at the time were very low - making it seem like a princely sum.

Anyway, had we built a cheap car then our economy would have turned out different. But hindsight is always 20-20 :-) Building a $2,500 car now is nothing but a time bomb - India, unlike US has very little oil reserves - almost all crude oil is imported - making it very vulnerable to oil price changes. An economic policy with incentives for energy efficient transportation - in form of mass transit, electric and hybrid, etc. would be critical for India to keep its momentum. I think we should tax the hell out of all cars - including the Tata $2,500 car and put that money in cheap, heavily subsidized mass transit.

5 Cars That Became Metaphors (deserved or not)

Great article on automobile history - interesting part is how all these experiences contributed to the development of the automobile industry as we know it today. The author talks about the following five:

• Ford Edsel = Failure
• Chevrolet Corvair = Unsafe
• Ford Pinto = Volatile
• DMC Delorean = Overhyped
• Yugo = Shoddy

You might want to add your own. For example,

Honda Civic = Sensible
FIAT = Fix It All the Time
Dodge Caravan = Soccer Moms' car