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When the first wheels rolled into India

December 23, 2008

The assembly operations had continued for about two years when Addison's applied to the government for permission to go in for progressive manufacture.

The government had meanwhile set up a Tariff Commission which visited all the important assemblies in India -- Premier's, Hindustan Motors, Addison's, and Ashok Motors, which was assembling Austin A-40s -- and recommended that Hindustan Motors should be permitted to manufacture the Morris-10 (it was called Hindustan-10), Premier's the Dodge and Fiat, Addison's the Morris Minor, and Ashok Motors the A-40.

But a legal tangle with Hindustan Motors led to stoppage of production of the Morris Minor at Addison's in 1952 -- and India lost out on a small car long before the Maruti came along.

Addison's then took up the assembly of Ford trucks, but that too came to a halt in a couple of years.Reviewing the growth of the automobile industry of India, M K Raju, a consultant now, but who was long with the Amalgamations Group, and a past president of the Automobile Components Manufacturers Assocation, writes: 'As advocated by Sir M Visvesvarayya as early as the 1930s, development of a full-fledged automotive industry is the key to our economic development.

Image: A visitor is reflected on the back grille of a Fiat car at a Fiat second and first hand automobile market in Sao Paulo. | Photograph: REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker