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Guys, don't be hard on the Tatas.
You won't probably appreciate the difficulties in producing a $2500 vehicle in India, and Tatas have a very good name in terms of corporate responsibility. People trust them. I believe there is about 12 to 18 months of waiting list for the vehicle, and they had to take out draws to decide the recipients of the first batches of Nano.
Their original plans of setting up a plant in Singur in the state of of West Bengal (ruled by Marxists) was canceled after a messy confrontation between the locals and the Tatas, with the state government caught in the crossfire. They incurred huge loss in scrapping the planned development there, and the next plants were all about 2000 km away from the original site. The production persisted, although a bit delayed, and people's impressions about the car are not bad.
Extreme cost pressures means close relationships with local vendors, and extreme cost pressure on procurement from them. Someone, somewhere then cuts too deep, and it then cuts into the bone. People learn from their mistakes, and slowly the rhythm settles down to good music.
Note that Tata's current hot-selling hatch Vista was also not a 'born to be a winner' design - it went through several earlier avatars, some selling ok, some outright losers. The learning from each generation was put back into the next design, and today Vista is considered to be the most VFM hatch in its segment, holding its own among international competitors like Chevy, Skoda, Hyundai, Suzuki, Honda.
Indians know a winner when they see one, and root for it all the way. Nano for sure is one. After all why won't you like a cute hatch similar to the Smart Fortwo, only a tad underpowered but seating 4 and at 1/4 the price of a fortwo. Who needs the power on overcrowded Indian roads anyways!
I worked for a short while (15 months) with a Tata JV, and they take quality quite seriously. So take that as an insider view of their intent. My field was Industrial Automation, and had nothing much to do with Tata Motors,so I am not privy to the details of their current operations.
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