Here we have local manufacturer Tata Motors making its NANO (it looks like a kiddy’s pedal car or a scooter with a bubble plastic wrap) model to retail for $2,500 and GM is competing selling by a “Chevy Beat” for $7,200. At least in China, it is the six cylinder Buick that is its most popular model. Irrespective, the margins in being a manufacturer in these two poverty stricken countries is simply a case of throwing good money after bad. Let Toyota or Hyundai get a foothold in third world countries. Dealing with India and China as a supplier is a license for one thing; to lose money. Apart from the “pride” of having great market share in China, I have never seen GM proclaiming to America about the veritable fortune being made producing cars in China. The truth is they are too scared to admit they are losing their shirts. The same goes for India.

Worse still, government-owned GM is about to spend half a $billion of taxpayers’ money to ramp up its manufacturing capacity to potentially pump out 140,000 NANO “clones”! This is absolutely crazy. The car which is the Volkswagen Beetle of India is still the 1956 Morris Oxford originally made in England but upon a change of model and production methods there, the entire plant was transferred to India fifty years ago. Royal Enfield motor cycles disappeared from the roads of England soon after World War Two. Today that very same motorcycle (now made in India of course) of the thirties is still in Indian Royal Enfield showrooms eighty years on.

The new General Motors is all about a new generation of cars, most of them environmentally friendly or at the luxury end of the spectrum. A “curry muncher” in New Delhi would never pay $40,000 for a Chevy Volt. Even if he possessed that sort of money he could buy sixteen NANO’s and rent them out to taxi operators. Thinking of Bollywood, I reckon movie stars would be too scared to cruise around in a Cadillac CTS. Like most Asians they get from point A to point B on a bike or motor scooter. What I want to hear from the new General Motors is they are pulling out of every country where there is no future for the cars they wish to build or have a chance of making profits that will match the levels achieved in America. There are hundreds of “wannabe’s” like the outfit in China trying to buy the Hummer who have the ability to make junk that might look good for five minutes but priced at a level where their product is not much more expensive than a high end ten speed bicycle! Who cares if they aren’t safe? There is no chance of Americans buying what Chinese and Indian people think is cool. Watching how they drive the moment you step into a car, saddle up on a bike or cross the street, your life is at risk anyway. Brake failure on a NANO is the least of a driver’s concern!