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The cars bearing the famous Bologna trident, Maserati, are rare on our roads — Vijay Mallya owns and drives one in Mumbai and so does Ajay Devgn, but they are imports. While the sportscars can be extreme, the four-door Quattroporte can be yours for under Rs 1.5 crore. The Quattroporte offers the best of both worlds — sports car attitude and luxury with plush carpeting. The GT is the sporty two-door Maser that has the performance attitude of a Ferrari and the sybaritic comforts of a Roman villa. It’s possible to have both, you know, and Indians will love it!
It looks like Fiat did the dipstick research for BMW when they launched the Rs 15 lakh 500. Everyone liked it, but very few bought it. While Fiat could do with the rub-off of a successful mainstream model, BMW needs no such favours from its wildly popular Mini brand. Hence the absence of the iconic German-owned British brand in the country. The Mini range obviously cannot be cheap and it will require its own independent sales channels. The volumes cannot justify the investment for the moment, but the Mini and its new Countryman variant that’s much more utilitarian are sorely missed.
Still on small cars, the Smart city cars are expensive for Europeans let alone be viable imports into India. But these Mercedes-built beauties are strong and never ever miss a beat even when abused. The ForFour four-seater (Rs 17-23 lakh) makes sense in India as a weekend getaway car for the rich cats while the ForTwo is a superbly built urban runabout. But the effort and the engineering that has gone into the Smart range plus the costs of production in Europe means Indians can’t get, er, Smart.
Now under the authorship of Spyker, the Saab story will continue to be written in Swedish — something that everyone who worked for wanted it to be. During GM’s time Saab was reduced to being a badge-engineered product but one that is reliable and refined like the other GM products today. It is virtually an unknown brand in India and the new owners of the company don’t have the money to establish its title here. But remember, at one point of time, even Skoda and Hyundai were unfamiliar names to most Indians!
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