The ‘Ambassador’ Is Dead, No Point Making Another Attempt At Resurrecting A Socialist Era Vestige

The ambassador car, manufactured by the Kolkata-headquartered Hindustan Motors, died a natural death in September 2014 when the last car rolled out of the company’s massive plant at Uttarpara in Hooghly.

But now comes the news that a new look ambassador may hit the roads in two years. Hindustan Motors, once the flagship company of the CK Birla group, has reportedly joined hands with French automobile manufacturer Peugeot to roll out the ambassador in a new avatar with a new look and engine.

This won’t be the first attempt--the earlier ones were futile--to give the car a makeover in order to enable it to compete with the much superior cars that started hitting the Indian roads post liberalisation.

Before the loss-making Hindustan Motors stopped production of the car, a number of attempts were made to give it a new look and even a new engine to improve its performance and enable it to compete with the many vehicles that started hitting the Indian roads in the post-liberalisation era (read this, this and this).

But none of those attempts succeeded because the ‘dowdy dowager’ which ruled India’s potholed roads in the Nehruvian socialist era was too old to change. The company, and the car, was caught in a time warp and there was no way that mere tinkering with looks and the engine could make the old car compete with the swanky, sleek, efficient and far better cars that started zipping on the roads.

After all the attempts to resuscitate the car which was already on its deathbed failed, Hindustan Motors wisely decided to suspend production of the car in May 2014. The company managed to sell only 2,000 units in 2013-14, as compared to the more than 20,000 cars that it used to produce during its heydays in the 1970s and 1980s under government patronage.

The company blamed “worsening conditions at its Uttarpara plant which include very low productivity, growing indiscipline, critical shortage of funds, lack of demand for its core product, the Ambassador, and large accumulation of liabilities” for the shutdown.

A few chassis remained in the assembly line of the company’s Uttarpara plant, and those were quickly completed and sent off by August 2014. The company announced the demise of the car in September that year.

In February 2017, Hindustan Motors sold the ‘ambassador’ brand to Peugeot for Rs 80 crore.

According to Hindustan Motors Managing Director Uttam Bose, the project to relaunch the ambassador with a new modern look and advanced engine is a joint venture between Peugeot and Hindustan Motors Financial Corporation of India (HMFCI), an associate company of the CK Birla group.

The new ambassador, said Bose, will roll out of the company’s Chennai plant which used to make cars for Mitsubishi.

Why re-launching the ambassador is a bad idea

While every private or public entity is free to launch, or re-launch, its products and services, there are some compelling reasons why the ambassador should not be re-launched. And even if Peugeot and HMFCI succeed in ultimately rolling out a new car, it should not be called the ‘ambassador’.

That’s because the ‘ambassador’ symbolised and personified everything that was wrong with India’s dismal socialist era. A car based on the Churchillian era Morris Oxford Series III, whose production stopped in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, the ambassador continued to survive in India solely due to government patronage.

Successive governments in the centre, starting from the ones led by Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi down to her son Rajiv, and the khichdi sarkars (coalition governments) in between, extended undue patronage and favours to Hindustan Motors and kept the ambassador alive artificially.

First, the Union Government did not allow any other private entity--apart from Premier Automobiles that made various versions of the Fiat, including the Premier Padmini--to enter the Indian market and slapped exorbitant duties on car imports.

The ambassador, and the Fiat to a lesser extent, had a complete monopoly in India. Faced with no competition, Hindustan Motors (and also Premier Automobiles) did not deem it necessary to upgrade their products.

The Union Government, pre-liberalisation, also pursued the inexplicable policy of capping the number of vehicles that the two companies could produce. Thus, one point in time in the late 1970s customers had to wait for eight years to get an ambassador car!

The Union Government was also guilty of the ambassador car remaining in a time warp. Import of new technologies was considered unnecessary and banned, and companies were discouraged from investing in research and development.

Any move that entailed outgo of precious foreign exchange--importing new technologies would have resulted in that--was severely restricted.

Hindustan Motors was happy to enjoy its monopoly and saw little benefit in keeping up with the times. The ambassador car was, thus, a bulky and ugly car with a bad engine. The only saving grace was that it was a roomy car with a lot of boot space.

But it symbolised all that was wrong with India. The white ambassador with the red beacon on top transported politicians and bureaucrats who ruled over India imperially.

The ambassador, its admirers used to say in its defence, was the ideal automobile for Indian roads. The reason--the car was sturdy and had a high ground clearance which made it easier for the vehicle to negotiate the numerous potholes on Indian roads.

That reason was a shameful one, because it presumed that Indian roads had to be poor quality potholed thoroughfares. The presumption that roads had to be of poor quality amounted to a disservice to the people of the nation.

Successive Union governments also made it mandatory for private taxi operators to buy only ambassadors (or Fiats and later Premier Padminis in western and southern parts of the country). Till as recently as the early part of the first decade of this century, the Bengal government refused to issue licences for taxis to any automobile except the ambassador.

The ambassador, thus, symbolised everything that was wrong with the India of the socialist era marked by the dark licence-permit raj with its corruption, nepotism and short-sightedness aimed at keeping India and its people poor and backward.

The ambassador is, hence, best left to rest peacefully in its grave. No point in reviving all the sorrowful and dark memories associated with the dodgy old lady that hurtled down the roads in an era that will remain an abiding shame for India.

Also read: The Ambassador’s dusty drive into oblivion