(photo found at Trivial Matters)
This morning, while chomping away at my daily pancake and sausage dog from the corner 7-11, suckin’ down a Popov/Pace Picante bloody mary and flipping though my copy of the Hindustan Times I caught this little tidbit. It appears that Bajaj Auto, makers of the famous but almost completely unavailable Chetak (Vespa clone… I think they are down to their last 80 here in the USA) are planning a comeback.
Right now, as the title link story states, Bajaj is holding their cards close to their chest for the time being. Maybe it’ll mean something good for BajajUSA.
I’ll be interested to see what their hand looks like, I mean, they WERE the biggest producer of scooters in India producing and selling 1 million vehicles in 1995 and 4th largest producer of 2-wheelers in the world.
My guess is that it will be powered by a KTM 4-stroke 125 or 250cc engine, whatever it is. I just want to see a 250cc AutoRickshaw! (from the looks of it, we will see SOME sort of new Rickshaw from Bajaj). They need to do SOMETHING to pull themselves out of this 10 month slump they’ve been in.
27. December 2007 at 3:35 am
Bajaj is reported to be working on a one-lakh (100,000 rupees, i.e. US$2,500) car with Renault-Nissan, though the price is probably going to end up being more like one lakh and change…
27. December 2007 at 9:19 am
A 250cc auto-rickshaw would be bad-ass. I would be scared to venture out on the road, but still bad-ass. I drove a 180cc 4 stroke across India earlier this year – I would have loved the extra cc on the slopes. We took her up to 11000 feet she climbed.
You can restore a chetak pretty cheap in India.
What you should look at are those 40cc lunas India made for a very long time. Walking is faster.
28. December 2007 at 10:21 am
If you like to wrench, Bajaj is for you. If you like to ride, consider the fact that the introduction of the Honda Eterno put every other geared scooter maker out of business in about 18 months.
Protective legislation is the only thing that kept them in business for forty years. There are a billion plus Indians and every other one of them is a scooter mechanic.