It looks like the final Hundustan Ambassador – Amby to the locals – has rolled off the line in a plant that looks about as jurassic as the car it made since the mid-1950s.
The company has just announced 250 management jobs will be culled and is still working out what to do with 2,600 people who once made the cars; the prognosis is poor. Hindustan also imports and assembles old-model Mitsubishis in a separate operation.
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Hindustan started assembling the British Morris Oxford-based Ambassador in 1957 and, when British Motor Coporation replaced it with the redesigned, Pininfarina-style model in 1959, Hindustan bought the tooling and kept the Ambassador going. It’s been restyled and updated over the years, given a new dashboard, parallel action wipers plus more modern Isuzu petrol or diesel engines and gaearboxes, also made locally under licence, but, essentially it’s still a 1950s Oxford.
India, meanwhile has moved on. As this livemint.com article shows, more modern cars like the 1980s-designed Maruti [Suzuki] 800 started to sound the deathknell for the Amby, even if it retained its taxi driver, government and VIP fans.
The 800 was recently axed after three decades of production and most of today’s Indian automakers’ products are current models from the likes of Suzuki, Hyundai, Honda, Ford, Renault, Nissan and General Motors’ Chevrolet. Safety levels are way higher than the Amby and 800 antiques thanks to modern body design technology and availability of items the Amby and 800 could have only dreamed of, like anti-lock brakes, skid control and airbags. And there’s comfort-related items like a/c, power steering, electric windows, Bluetooth – sophisticated Indian buyers, especially younger owners, want all this stuff. They do not want to be offered a decades-old, obsolete western cast-off.
Many of the new crop of Indian made autos are exported – the country now is an ‘export hub’ for some brands such as Hyundai and Nissan – and quality is as good as anywhere (I recently heard a UK buyer praise her well built ‘Korean made’ car which had, in fact, been built in Chennai).
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By GlobalDataSo, farewell, Mr Ambassador. You’ve served your country well. Now, it’s time to retire.
