Tata Motors design head says every car must have good look

 After tasting success with the Tiago’s looks, the country’s largest automobile company Tata Motors believes that irrespective of price, every car should have good look.

In an interaction with DH, Tata Motors Head of Design, Pratap Bose, said, “For the Tiago project, we were clear that we will come out with an outstanding looking car. Till date, we have got bookings of over 60,000 for my first project (Tiago) as Head of Design. We are seeing that aesthetics is one of the biggest purchasing factor in India today.”

Elaborating the hard work behind the success of Tiago, Bose said, “Tata Motors has three global design centres in the UK, Italy and India with over 200 engineers. Pune is our biggest facility. To be a global carmaker, you need inputs from best practices. Turin is a heart of car design centre in Italy, and Coventry is a heart of car engineering centre in the UK. Therefore, we get the ability to tap into a network of experience and expertise.” On Thursday, Tata Motors launched its SUV Hexa, with a price starting at Rs 12.25 lakh (ex-showroom B’luru), for the manual transmission variant, and Rs 15.16 lakh for the automatic variant.


“Fiver years ago, the team size was only 40 people. Owing to market demand, we are widening our range. We have expanded our studios as well. We have invested heavily in terms of people, infrastructure and capability. This gives us three global studios which is unique for an Indian OEM,” Bose added.

In terms of the duration needed to execute a project, Bose said, “Right from a sheet of paper to a sheet of metal, it will take 48 months. First 18-24 months, it is pure design process and then manufacturing, testing, validation.”

“Hexa is the new segment which was a challenging and exciting project. We had to do it quickly to respond to the growth in the market. Our engineers told us that the Hexa has an outstanding engine, but we had to make it look strong, and not aggressive. If you look at Hexa, SUV looks stronger but doesn’t look aggressive.”