Key Points
However, a small, little car called the Maruti 800 arrived and changed the game..
The first car was handed over to Harpal Singh, an Indian Airlines employee, who had sold his Fiat car to buy the Maruti 800..
The small car went from strength to strength and M800 production crossed the cumulative mark of 20 lakh units in 2002-03 and and 25 lakh units in 2005-06..
The M800 not only altered the course of personal mobility in India but was also the cornerstone on which the then Maruti Udyog Ltd, a public sector enterprise, went on to become a dominant force in the automotive industry proving everyone wrong from what started out as an "accident" doomed to fail...
When initially the government and then later Maruti approached carmakers for collaboration and become joint venture partners, nobody was willing to put in 40 per cent equity in cash," he had told PTI in an interview last year...
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Forty years on, memories of M800 linger as the car that altered personal mobility in India
14, Dec, 23New Delhi, Dec 14 (PTI) At the brand centre of Maruti Suzuki India’s headquarters in South Delhi, among the many modern vehicles on display a tiny 40-year-old white car occupies a prominent space. It is no ordinary car but the first customer unit of the popularly known ‘Maruti 800’ or the M800 model that revolutionised […]