Tata says the car will be launched on March 23; but the company’s A’bad dealers aren’t in the loop

With Tata Motors on Thursday announcing that it will formally launch the Nano on March 23, there is much excitement among prospective buyers who have been waiting for the car for long. Car dealers in the city said that they expect to be flooded with enquiries for booking from Friday.

Tata Motors has announced that the Nano will be launched at a function in Mumbai on March 23, 2009, and that the cars will be on display at the company's dealerships from the first week of April 2009. Customers can book their cars from the second week of April 2009. The company has, however, also announced that the booking procedure and other details will be made public on March 23 itself. Some dealers are expecting more than 100 calls and walk-ins a day. But they added that, as of now, they had little concrete information to offer customers because dealers in the city had received no official communication from the company.

A Tata Motors dealer said that though the company had announced a date for the formal launch of the car, no communication in this regard had been sent to the city’s car dealers. “Even the booking amount has not been declared yet,” he said “and I don’t know how many units have been earmarked for Gujarat initially.”

He said only 3,000 cars will be produced each month in the first phase, and these will distributed among the company’s 440 dealers across the nation. “Gujarat may get 10% of the total production; this is almost the same as the state’s contribution to total sales of Tata Motors vehicles in the past,” the dealers said.

Ankur Parikh/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication