Barely five months after the first Nano was delivered in the city, Ratan Tata’s ‘people’s car’ is available for purchase in the used car market. The Nano LX, which costs Rs1.81 lakh when purchased new, is being sold in the city as a used car at Rs2.05 lakh apiece.
It may be recalled that as many as 15,000 to 20,000 people had booked the car in the first booking period of 17 days in April 2009. Tata Motors had promised to deliver around 4,000 Nano cars in Gujarat by March 2010.
But in the last two months, around 15 Nano cars have come into the used car market for resale. Sources said that many people who had booked Nano cars never really intended to use them.
They considered it beneath their prestige to ride in a Nano and had bought the cars only to sell them later.
Another reason why many people are selling off their Nano so soon is that they are disappointed with it. “Some affluent people had purchased it because of the craze,” said Suresh Ramnani, senior sales executive with Jolly Motors. “But when they found that it was not as comfortable as the cars they had been using earlier, they decided to sell off their Nano.”
YD Sood, president of Auto Friend Owners Association, said that the Nano is spacious but people had unrealistic expectations from the car.
Interestingly, some buyers said they had purchased the Nano only because Tatas had shifted the car’s manufacturing plant from West Bengal to Gujarat. One such buyer, Mahendra Goswami, said he had decided to buy a Nano the day Ratan Tata announced that he was shifting the car plant to Gujarat.
Comments