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An open letter to Ford / Volvo India.

By: Karthik :+: Under: Business, Cars, Desi Ishtyle, Humor, It Happens Only in India, Opinion
On: ⋅ May 25, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Dear Ford / Volvo,

Speaking on behalf of a billion people, I welcome you to our country. I appreciate the competition, the wide choice, the pollution and the effort to substitute the public transport system with traffic jams and increased consumption of petrol.

I also have to thank you for your efforts to con the Indian buyer into picking up your cars with sport packages. I know we get all of 4 alloy wheels. Well that and a spoiler, which is as handy as a battery operated fan in 100+ degree weather. And we love the limited edition yellow that makes Govinda look like he is the brand ambassador for Armani. You sold us the Ford Escort, when the car was at the end of its life cycle everywhere around the world, it was a piece of Ford legacy that India had to have, we understand.

From recent news articles, I understand that your company plans on introducing Volvo to India. I also understand that Volvo is going to be your luxury brand, while you continue to use the Ford brand for the mid-size segment. The news article informs me that you plan on introducing the C30 and the C70 in India.

Since your market research team seems to be as sharp as a bowling ball, here are a few pointers. If they were an Indian company do not worry, they were just doing their job in protecting India from being invaded by Model T’s.

We Indians hate coupes.

Allow me to present the Sipani Dolphin, India’s last coupe. And that was back in the early 80’s. Yes I have traveled in one and trust me when I say it is a POS, well a better POS than most of your cars.

I know that the Dolphins failure had some to do with bad decisions by Sipani, a fiberglass body and a very ugly look. A bigger part of the problem was that it had only two doors.

See, working men and women often times use their Motorcycles, public transportation or office assisted transportation to get to work. The time people use cars is over the weekends or on road trips.

Indian’s have families and I am talking parents, uncles, aunts, their 4th cousin and his kid. This is our travel posse. Sometimes we even pack our lunch, because we like it like that. If you ever get a chance, try packing Idlis coated with Chilli powder in a banana leaf on your next trip.

Ooh that and Indian families always include people of the same age who normally manage to hold up traffic in Central Florida, because they cannot pick between Fixodent or Sea-bond. I suggest Fixodent, at least the people in their ad’s look younger.

Coming back to my point, when you have people that old, who normally sit in the back, getting in and out becomes very difficult, if not impossible. Add Indian traditional clothes like Sari’s and Dhoties, it is a trip to a hospital waiting to happen, at least once every week.

Yes yes, I know that coupes in general have longer doors to ease this, but in a country like India, where we stack cars on top of each other, to accommodate our growing ever population a side effect of our protest against Latex, longer doors makes it more difficult to maintain the car and in a way to get in and out of it.

If you still want to pursue the coupe concept in India, be my guest, but remember to send me a check when you miserably fail, because I told you first and all I am trying to do is to keep you alive for a little longer so you can re brand your latest Ford Explorer as a Mercury Mariner and charge me a few thousand extra dollars and lead me to believe that I paid for a better car.

Ps: I will also be sending this to most other car companies that plan on launching Coupes in India, I might tone it down a little bit. After all they did not start the mass manufacturing of cars or decide that it was ok for cars to not be able to handle turns.

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