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Nano buyers face long wait for new Tata car
Richard Orange23.03.09
Hundreds of thousands of Indians will rush to book one of Tata Motors' £1400 Nano cars, launched today. But they must win a lottery to actually get their hands on one, the firm revealed.
The company will accept bookings for just 16 days from 9 April and, within two months, the lucky 100,000 will be chosen through "a computerised random selection procedure". Even then, the winners may have to wait well into next year as the new Nano factory Tata is building will not be finished until the year end, and the stand-in plant near Delhi can only produce 50,0 00 cars at full capacity.
Chairman Ratan Tata admitted the delay could be difficult. "You don't want someone to wait too long for his car," he said. "It's like waiting for a pretty woman: wait too long and she will become old, and perhaps fat."
Reader views (3)
Its a shame we cant say anything these days,lest we sound sexist,unethical or recist.Its a light-hearted joke & in a democracy everyone is allowed one.Lets keep it this way!!
- Mr Suterland, UK
Chairman Tata should get rid of his sexist prejudices... or most women will react as very unfavourably as I have. He transmits a terribly negative image for him and his products ...
- M.B.B:, Madrid - Spain
I can't believe that people are still describing cars in terms of women, and women in terms of their appearance - that appearance needing to include being slender, and women not counting for anything when they get old.
Aside from anything else, this sort of antediluvian language is unlikely to sell cars to women or indeed to thinking men.
- Jane Sunderland, UK
