"
Tell me who did the six-bike shoot-out in your February issue?"
was the first question followed rapidly by the next: "When are
you going riding again?" Normal questions hurled at us by bike
enthusiasts every day but coming from the man who has taken over as
executive director of Tata Engineering's Passenger Car Business Unit
and the Engineering Research Centre, they had us pleasantly stumped.
Dr V Sumantran, the genial but immensely experienced car engineer and
(bike) enthusiast, is the man in charge of heading Tata Engineering's
automobile division as it goes about finding its feet among the heavyweights
in the business. He has had a long stint at GM, holding prime positions
within the giant organisation that is General Motors before he decided
to head to India and the Tata car project. I first met Dr Sumantran
in Delhi during Auto Expo and it was evident that Tata Engineering had
an incumbent just right to fill the void at the ERC, the font of the
Indian automotive industry's human resources. Not since the days of
the late K G K Rao (the man vested with the responsibility of setting
up this fabled organisation by such greats as J R D Tata and Sumant
Moolgaonkar) have I found as accomplished and capable a personality
heading ERC. And this can only mean better days ahead for the company.
When we spent a day looking up the forthcoming new Sedan, we were fortunate
that Dr Sumantran not only spent an hour with us early in the morning
talking about his days at GM and also his bikes (had his very own Yamaha
R6 super sports motorcycle which he sold off only a month before he
returned to India!) but later on in the day he filled us in with his
thoughts on the ongoing car projects at Tata Engineering.
 OVERDRIVE:
To
begin with, your thoughts on the Indica project: where is it going
from here and what will be the time frame for the Sedan?
Dr. V. Sumantran : We are in the last phase of the development
activities of this programme. Typically we are reluctant to name a
date but it will be this calendar year. Beyond this all I can say
is if you look at the configuration of the platform, if you look at
the layout of the critical architecture, it is an architecture that
will allow us to address a number of other derivatives. Today if you
look at the typical platform in this segment you have everything from
a sedan to a station wagon to a mini-MPV, sometimes even car derived
vans; all kinds of things are possible. If you look at the wheelbase,
the H-points, the firewall, the hardware for the platform this is
actually very well placed so it will allow us to get a number of derivatives.
And the whole idea will be that the investment that the company has
made in this journey in the small car architecture will pay dividends
through a number of such successive derivatives.
OVERDRIVE:With
the suspension revisions has the track been narrowed down?
Dr. V. Sumantran : Not significantly, very nominally. You see
we changed the shock towers, we changed some of the suspension geometry
which resulted in a very minor track variation but not that we wanted
to reduce track variation.
OVERDRIVE:
But one critical area that hasn't yet been addressed though remains
the large visual gap between the wheel arch and the tyre circumference?
Dr. V. Sumantran : You have not seen the last of it yet!
OVERDRIVE:
The engine seems to be very strong. In the diesel the torque is very
evident and the crucial driveability in the Indian cycle feels very
meaty. Some better feel needs to be engineered in the gearshifting.
And the steering wheel is too highly placed. I would like to see something
more of the adjustable kind?
Dr. V. Sumantran : Your observations are all right-on. There
are a number of areas we are further taking the product to. You talked
about the wheel arch, you talked about the gearshift pattern. In fact
even today I might review some further developments in these same
areas. Likewise the steering column. It is also to some extent what
cost the market will bear. We have designed for the difficult fifth
to the 95 percentile occupant and to get better comfort tilt and adjustable
with rake and telescope would be nice but we are trying to locate
how it would manifest itself.
OVERDRIVE:
You have been here barely two months and you are working at a furious
pace?
Dr. V. Sumantran : We want to be our own worst critics because
that is the level of our ambition. We want to be extremely critical
of every element that is faced in this project so that every opportunity
to improve is taken advantage of. This is a journey and all I can
say is when I came to this company, one of the things that really
moved me was the vision of the leadership, both for the project as
well as, what I seemed to be, for the whole organisation. The conviction
that we have taken a big challenge and we are going to succeed, that
is what is driving us.
OVERDRIVE:
Where do you see major improvements happening in the coming days in
the Indica?
Dr. V. Sumantran : Typically today in this segment any auto
manufacturer is constantly working on improving what would be the
quantifiable performance as well as the intangibles. By quantifiable
performance I mean, certainly we are looking for better fuel economy,
better acceleration, better on-road driveability, better handling,
the numbers that are quantifiable. We are also addressing a lot of
the soft touch issues, interiors, dashboard layout, textures, colour
co-ordination, the feel of things and so these are areas we are improving.
But like everybody else in the small car segment you notice how much
development is happening and we are determined to do our best to stay
competitive with everybody else.
OVERDRIVE:
What sort of numbers should Telco be doing in the next two three years
when everything is right from your end?
Dr. V. Sumantran : This is certainly an architecture that is
designed for over a 100,000 unit volume. We have a plant that is capable
of 150,000 unit volume. We have to get to the levels of utilisation
that would put us in the 100-120,000 to be comfortable. Having said
that the company is also reducing its cost structure quite successfully,
and as a result our break-even volumes are also reducing. When you
add the two together plus add the petrol segment now being more carefully
targeted and the sedan coming and taking us into a new segment, we
could be getting there. More so because these are segments that we
have not successfully captured so far. The sedan cause we didn't have
a sedan before and the petrol cause we have chosen to emphasise the
diesel. But these are the market segments available to us, both on
the petrol side as well as the sedan side and we think to get there
from here is not going to be a monumentally difficult task.
OVERDRIVE:
With the APM for petrol and diesel on the anvil, on what strengths
would you perceive the Indian car buyer make his purchase decisions?
Dr. V. Sumantran : At the end of the day the dynamic efficiencies
attributed to diesels will still give it an advantage. With the turbo
diesel we even address the mid-range and torque for normal road driving
conditions. So again like most manufacturers, most global manufacturers
particularly the European and the Japanese will offer both a petrol
and diesel and allow a customer to choose. We will have the luxury
of doing that. The petrol will have an output of 85hp and the diesel
with the turbocharger gives us 125Nm of torque. They will both be
viable options and there will be always one group of customers who
will want the petrol oriented driving feel and another who does value
the extra fuel economy as long as it does not penalise driving performance.
We think we will be able to address both segments so we are prepared
for whatever changes might happen.
So there you have it, right from the man himself, delivered in the
typically forthright and honest vein.
When we were looking up the Tata Sedan in the proto shop of ERC's
Cab Design, there is a sign board with a quote attributed to Sumant
Moolgaonkar. It reads and I quote: "Expect the best; ask for
it relentlessly and you will get it." One has the feeling that
if not anything else Sumantran will get his men rallying around not
asking for but delivering something close to the best. Tata Engineering
finally has the car (and bike) guy they were looking out for.
...Adil Jal Darukhanawala
Dr V SUMANTRAN is the Executive Director, Passenger Car Business
Unit & Engineering Research Centre
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March 2002