
India's iconic Ambassador car brand is sold to Peugeot - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38945674
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ganeshkrishnan
It's funny and coincidental that many years ago Peugot ran this ad:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcVyz-
fZIzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcVyz-fZIzg)

The car that is being molded is Ambassador

~~~
ptaipale
The news also instantly reminded me of this ad.

~~~
riteshkpr
I know which ad you're referring to. Don't have to click this link, it was a
catchy one!

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ceocoder
> The handbrake rarely worked properly - instead

> spawning a generation of drivers that could easily

> do hill starts deftly balancing the accelerator and brake

That'd be me. When I bought my Mitsubishi Lancer Hatchback with manual
transmission in the US, having a working handbrake was a jarring experience.
My friends spent a lot of time helping me break my habit of using gas and
brake pedals for keeping the car balanced up hill - I can still do it well.

I'd like to note that this feature wasn't exclusively limited to Ambassadors,
my dad owned a Maruti 800[1], and a Fiat Padmini[2], neither of those had
working handbrakes AND my dad managed to install aftermarket LGP kit in former
and a datsun diesel engine in latter. Both modifications made it an
interesting driving experience. These days when I'm driving my automatic
transmission car on a freeway with no potholes, cows, I do get some flashbacks
of driving in pouring rain with water creeping up from floor and being scared
out of my wits.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maruti_800](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maruti_800)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Padmini](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Padmini)

~~~
Mikeb85
> That'd be me. When I bought my Mitsubishi Lancer Hatchback with manual
> transmission in the US, having a working handbrake was a jarring experience.
> My friends spent a lot of time helping me break my habit of using gas and
> brake pedals for keeping the car balanced up hill - I can still do it well.

You mean people actually use the handbrake for hill starts with a manual? I
thought it was just something you do when first learning. I've always found it
more difficult to coordinate everything with the handbrake, I can operate all
the pedals quick enough anyway. The only time I use the handbrake really is
for sliding around :-)

~~~
wazoox
With modern, powerful cars, using the handbrake really is unnecessary. However
until recently many European cars had only a handful of HP and incredibly low
torque compared to modern diesels... Citroën 2CV: 12 to 21 HP DIN. VW Beetle:
34 to 50 HP. Even a "sport" car like a Golf GTI was 110 HP only in the 80s.
The torque was also much lower.

~~~
Mikeb85
Guess it makes sense. Every manual I've used has been relatively quite
powerful.

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currywurst
I'm really impressed with the new Peugot 3008 i-Cockpit system
[[https://youtu.be/5UapzN65V7Q?t=1m16s](https://youtu.be/5UapzN65V7Q?t=1m16s)]
and the general interior design. IMHO way ahead of the competition.

This is a really surprising development! The Peugeot leadership seems to be
unafraid to think different, and I think great things are in store for the
Ambassador brand. It was totally neglected for decades.

~~~
izacus
I've tested the new Peugeot 508 and 307 and they had horrible infotainment
software - slow, buggy and very illogical (some settings couldn't be controled
from steering wheel, some settings were only available on the screen on the
dashboard, etc.)

The fact that 307 got rid of climate control buttons and only had the settings
on the laggy touchscreen was even worse.

Did 3008 really improve that much in this regard?

~~~
ptaipale
307 isn't particularly new, though. Production ended in 2007 (except in South
America and China).

I agree that putting controls behind a touch screen is not nice. Especially in
the winter where I live, they're impossible - they don't work in the cold,
with gloves.

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jamescun
The Ambassador is based on the Morris Oxford, a British car from the 1950s,
and I am fascinated that they never felt any pressure to update the design
(although if I recall correctly in the early 2000s they replaced the original
British Motor Company 1.5L with an Isuzu 1.6L).

~~~
ptaipale
In a planned, protectionist economy, without competition, there was little
need to develop or improve.

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unmole
> the Ambassador was for three decades India's bestselling car

That's because there were no other manufacturers.

~~~
IgorPartola
I was going to ask that. 20k sales per year in a country with 1b people seems
really low.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
It was so low because of the per capita income that was equally low, and
looking into reasons for such a disproportion would lead to a wide-ranging
discussion.

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taneq
I wonder if any of that $12 million will go to paying out the workers who were
left stranded by the company? If the linked story
([http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
india-36044903](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36044903)) is
anything to go by, the employees got severely screwed when the plant shut
down.

~~~
dominotw
>the employees got severely screwed when the plant shut down.

Isn't that the case everywhere? Why do these workers in particular deserve
'pay outs'?

These workers seemed to have got screwed by the globalisation like people from
soviet union who had no idea how to make sense of the new world where govt is
not resposible to provide you with a job anymore.

~~~
taneq
Well there's this guy:

> Nirmal Kumar Ram, who worked at the factory's engine plant, says he has not
> yet left his job because Hindustan Motors has still not told workers that
> they were fired.

Instead of communicating with the employees they just kind of forgot about
them.

And this guy:

> "Even before production stopped, I didn't get my salary for six months."

The company wasn't paying the employees, of course it's impossible to know
what was said but you wouldn't think that he'd be waiting around for six
months unpaid if they weren't telling him it was coming.

------
technologia
I remember riding in this vehicle and feeling the number of things that went
wrong in their construction. Honestly its hard to extricate such a POS car
from my memories in India.

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JumpCrisscross
To what degree did India mortgage its industrial future in its protectionist
era?

~~~
sdfaasdf
Take a guess. China, India had similar GDP per-capita figures in late 70s
(Korea was poorer at one point). India never suffered from war and dictatorial
madness like Korea and China, yet today India has < 1/5 GDP of China, and
about ~< 2x the GDP of S.Korea (with 10-20x the population).

All this for what ? Some anti-colonial revolution ? Nope. India has almost
completely ignored everything Indian, if not actively tried to destroy its
traditions/languages/cultures and has ran after who ever would care to smooch
over its "elite". India is as much a British colony today (if not more) than
it ever was.

~~~
oarla
Not sure if it is fair to compare India and China/Korea. I don't know much
about the history of China and Korea, but I doubt if both those countries
faced full scale colonialism like India did. Recovering from the devastation
caused by 200+ years of colonial rule takes a while.

S.Korea particularity benefitted from the Korean war. USA stepped in and
boosted it's economy.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I don 't know much about the history of China and Korea...I doubt if both
> those countries faced full scale colonialism like India_

China had a _much_ harder time through the colonial era than India. Remember,
China spent decades being traded between warring imperial powers (France vs.
Britain, Britain vs. Japan, Japan vs. the Soviets, _et cetera_ ). In that
process, its institutions were wrecked and cultural memory wreaked havoc with.
When all was said and done, they had no equivalent to India's nation-spanning
railroad system; systems of law, governance and courts; or (relatively)
unified linguistic bloc.

~~~
ptaipale
I tend to disagree slightly, though I don't see why you're downvoted (I don't
think you should downvote a civilly written comment just because you
disagree).

China was subject to colonialism, but not in the same way as India; it was
never fully controlled by colonial masters like the British controlled India.
There were colonial enclaves and much of humiliation with being forced to hand
over areas for trade posts; there were the opium wars and later there was the
Japanese expansion and imperialism, but the deep Chinese countryside was
always managed by the Chinese for the Chinese.

And there were decades of unrest and civil war. But still, I don't see how
China was suffering from colonialism more than India.

They both had their hardest times in their early independence after colonial
times. China with civil war, Great Leap Forward, Cultural revolution; India
with jumping to the Soviet boat, socialism, planned economy and protectionism.

Korea, on the other hand, has throughout its history been a smaller nation
which bigger neighbours try to run over. Sometimes - like in the case of Japan
in earlier half of 20th century - it has indeed been completely overrun for
decades. So, to survive, it has become fiercely nationalistic. But Korea also
definitely faced absolute full scale colonialism, in my opinion in much more
depth than India.

~~~
walshemj
But China suffered from warlords and persistent low level violence for the
first half of the 20th century

~~~
ptaipale
Definitely, but that was not colonialism. The warlords were Chinese; the power
bases for these warlords were built during the late Qing dynasty. They of
course had some Western influences (one even proclaimed himself Christian,
another announced he was admirer of George Washington) but primarily they were
just Chinese men of power, with short-term visions that were ultimately
defeated by determined nationalists.

------
Shivetya
there is a lot of manufacturing taking place in India by very large brands and
some of it for export. Motorcycles and such are being built there for export
by brands even as iconic as BMW and Harley Davidson.

So buying up an already established brand is probably cheaper than building
the factory (new construction, bribes, etc) to get manufacturing capacity
where labor is cheap

~~~
ptaipale
This is a good point. If you want to access the Indian market, your problem
probably isn't building a plant, or finding competent labour, or buying
materials or logistics. It is the licenses and permissions to operate, and the
relations to government officials. And if you can purchase an existing outfit
that has at least some of the needed licenses and permissions and has some
existing government contacts, contracts and agreements, then it is easier to
ramp up business.

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nautical
Ambassador and Maruti are very popular Indian cars . Ambassador being the car
used by almost all government officials .

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korginator
I don't get it. What is the point of this purchase?

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prodmerc
So what? Tata Motors owns Jaguar, Fiat owns Jeep, BMW owns the Mini, I don't
see anything interesting here...

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sdfaasdf
Has Peugeot lost its mind ? This is like buying the brand name of TVS XL 100
or Kinetic Luna. The French must be drunk over after the Dassault rip-off they
pulled off.

~~~
nojvek
For $12m it seems like a bargain.

