After revolutionising motorbike with the Pulsar, Rajiv Bajaj is trying once again to redefine his company with the novel, intra-city 4-wheeler, the RE60. Will it work?
A handful of Marathi-speaking Bajaj employees on a misty cold morning in Delhi stand guard next to Bajaj Auto’s new RE60 ‘4-wheeler’ at the biennial Auto Expo, India’s premier international auto exhibition.
Sporting the typical Bajaj white jersey and jackets these middle-aged men have been with the company for decades, witnessing it transform from an iconic scooter maker to a performance bike producer, and are intrigued by the attention their company’s newest invention is gathering.
“Our Pulsars have been market favourites for years and though we have not showcased any bikes this time around, see the excitement on the faces of these visitors”, says one of the attendants gleefully.
He was talking about the RE60, Bajaj’s production-ready, four-seater passenger car developed entirely in-house by India’s number two bike maker after five years of development work including multiple strategy changes and several delays. However, unlike the Tata Nano, the RE60’s target customer according to its managing director Rajiv Bajaj, is the Indian auto rickshaw owner. (Click here for graphs)
Rewriting the rules
Weighing just 400 kgs, the RE60 is powered by a 200cc engine which develops peak power of 20ps and a top speed of 70 km/hr. Almost all the specifications are about half as good as those delivered by the Tata Nano, which has a bigger engine and better top-end speed.
Like the Pulsar, which exploded onto the scene in 2001 and changed the image of Bajaj Auto, the RE60 is a similar gamble for the ‘anti-car’ company, as Bajaj likes his company to be referred to. “This vehicle was born out of the costs and skills of a two-wheeler market. There must be a starting point for a strategy, which in our case was a brand,” Bajaj had said at the time of the vehicle’s unveiling.
Bajaj is largely banking on the hope that of all state governments alter their intra-city mode of transport in the near future and switch to the RE60 instead of the three-wheeler, where Bajaj Auto is the market leader for several years with its petrol and CNG-driven models.
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