“Look upon My Works, Ye Mighty!”
Shelly’s poem Ozymandias is forced to mind when reading this piece from the Herald-Tribune of Sarasota, Florida. It makes perfect economic sense—cheap, useful cars with good gas mileage—but does it ever speak volumes about the inevitability of change…
Indian car company readies Sarasota showroom
Toni WhittSARASOTA COUNTY – While working for General Motors in the 1980s and early 1990s, Pawan Goenka discovered Americans’ passion for trucks and SUVs.
As president of the automotive sector for Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., based in Mumbai, India, Goenka is using that knowledge to bring India’s first trucks to the United States this year.
But Mahindra is not off-loading the stereotypical gas guzzler. The Mahindra trucks benefit from advanced emissions technology, making them more environmentally friendly. They also run on diesel and get about 30 miles per gallon.
A new brand — coming out just as GM struggles with solvency and Chrysler declares bankruptcy — and that new technology should create enough excitement to overcome dealers’ problems selling trucks and sports utility vehicles amid a recession and on the heels of last year’s gasoline spike, Goenka said.
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And I’ll bet they don’t even have Obama imposing limits on their ad budget.
I’ll also bet they aren’t being bailed out by our federal government…
Remember the Yugo?
I wouldn’t make that bet, were I you, without investigating the question of the maker being owned by India’s government and how much of our foreign aid went there. I don’t know the answer myself, but these things are hardly ever quite as government independant as the US, for example, has been, traditionally.
And anyway, that wasn’t the point. If this is the kind of competition Chrysler has up against it, explain to me how cutting their ad budget is going to help them compete.