From the moment the first Ford Model-T rolled off the assembly line, automobile manufacturers have made lofty promises about what they thought would become the peoples' car of the future. India's Tata Motors is the latest entrant to the one-car-to-rule-them-all game, but as Sadanand Dhume writes, it's not going as well as planned. looks at the long and bumpy road in bringing the masses' motors to market.
Above, a potential customer gets the Tata Nano salespitch, in April 2009.
Henry Ford, the owner of Ford Motor company, beside his Model-T. In 1908, Ford ran an advertisement in the Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal under boldface that read, "The Ford Line. 'As per usual -- will eclipse everything else.'" He wasn't joking: Henry Ford's car for "the great multitude" heralded the beginning of mass assembled products and the age of the automobile.
The Fuller Dymaxion at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nev., in 2007. R. Buckminster Fuller is famous for a few things, perhaps chief among them being the geodesic dome, or "buckyball." However, he had larger plans, including a revolutionary car. Had it taken off, the Fuller Dymaxion would have caused plenty of rubbernecking on the highway. It was a bulbous submarine-looking tank of a car with a a rear-mounted engine and rudder-like steering mechanism that pivoted a single (and wobbly) back wheel. First built in 1933, the prototype was impressively efficient -- topping out at 31 miles a gallon. A fatal accident doomed its production and the project was scuttled soon after. It remains an inspiration to designers for many years after its last drive.
Volkswagen owners try to break the record for the most number of Beetles on the road at one time in the Strasse des 17, in Berlin, Germany in 2005. In 1934, Adolf Hitler set out to create a "people's car," or Volkswagen, having decided that the automobile should not be solely the privilege of the rich. With this in mind, he directed famed engineer Ferdinand Porsche to design what is now known as the Beetle. Following World War II, Volkswagen produced more than 21 million "punchbuggies." The Beetle became a part of pop culture with the 1968 movie The Love Bug which starred a white, anthropomorphic Beetle. A 1961 advertisement shows the car driving through a flood, above the text "The last one to conk out." It hasn't conked out yet, with a new iteration out this year.
Vladimir Putin smiles as he inspects his first ever car, a Zaporozhets 968, that he purchased as a student in 1972. Zaporozhets, or ZAZ, as they were affectionately known, were Russia's answer to the Volkswagen Beetle: cheap, mass produced, and easy to fix. And they needed to be: much like the East Germany's Trabant or any number of Eastern bloc automobiles, they lived long, hard lives and were of questionable build quality.
Above, actor Christopher Lloyd sits in a Delorean DMC-12 at Universal Studios Hollywood lot in August 2007. While the car's fame came mostly from its starring role in the Back to the Future movies, its production history did not have a Hollywood ending. John DeLorean, an American car engineer who developed the Pontiac GTO, among other vehicles, formed DeLorean Motor Company in 1973. The DMC-12, which first hit showrooms in 1981, was iconic for its stainless steel construction and gullwing doors, but slow sales and criminal proceedings against John DeLorean cut short the car's production. In recent years, legacy models, including a gold plated version, have been collectors items.
A Smart Car on display at a Daimler-Chrylser press conference in 2006. Designed for narrow European streets and stylish European consumers, the Smart was born out of another chic brand, Swatch. CEO Nicolas Hayek saw the potential for a car that mimicked the style and personalization that was omnipresent in Swatch watches. He began the project in conjunction with Volkswagen in the mid-1990s, but the German carmaker scuttled the deal to avoid cannibalizing its own product. And so Hayek turned to Daimler-Benz, the manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz luxury cars. The Smart was launched in 1998 and was introduced to the United States in 2009.
A Tesla Roadster at the Challenge Bibendum fuel-efficient car show at Tempelhof, Germany, in May 2011. A $100,000 sports car can't quite claim to be a people's car, but the all-electric Tesla -- founded by PayPal and Space X tech entrepreneur Elon Musk -- is trying to redefine environmentally friendly performance automobiles. The company has had a few production and sales stumbles along the way, but the car itself has been widely acclaimed. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Tesla's got a lot of admirers: virtually every other sports car maker has an electric prototype in the works.
A line of Tata Nanos parked in Sansad, India, in February, 2011. Much like the Model-T or the Volkswagen Beetle, the Nano is trying to appeal to a newly emergent middle class. Call it the world car for the developing world. With a target price of 1 Lakh Rupees, approximately $2,200, the Nano is designed to take a generation of Indian families from two wheel -- moped and motorcycles -- to four.
