Tata Nano designed by Jaguar’s Ian Callum? We like the idea very much

Ian Callum with the Jaguar F-Type, the car he designed.

Most of us just love the way the Jaguar F-Type looks. The design of this ‘feline’ luxury sportscar was penned by none other than the Scotsman, Ian Callum, Jaguar’s star designer. You can’t shy away from the fact that the F-Type, in the correct colour, is a visual sensation to behold. This isn’t the only car that he has had his hands on; remember the Aston Martin DB7? The car Jeremy Clarkson aired on Top Gear in 2003; the DB7 was demonstrated to hit 217 km/h from a standstill in fourth gear, all the way. Well, this Aston Martin was also designed by Callum.

The Aston Martin DB7.

Ian Callum told in an recent interview with an international publication, that he would love to design the next Tata Nano! Now, we don’t know about you, but that’s something we would love to see, a people’s car designed by this Scottish legend. As you all are aware of, the current iteration of the Nano is touted as the world’s most affordable car. Yes, the Tata Nano can no longer be called a 1 lakh rupee car, but it still remains a low priced automobile for the masses of India. Of course, if Callum gets hold of the Nano, the design efforts on it alone would make it more expensive than an Hyundai i20! But jokes aside, Callum isn’t the only one who’s fascinated with the idea of designing a ‘good looking’ low-budget car. Gordon Murray, the design genie behind the spectacular McLaren F1, designed a city runabout called the T.25 and its design wasn’t exactly ugly.

The current Nano looks decent for a city runabout of its price, except for the windshield wiper, perhaps.

Most of us might think that it’s quiet easy to design, manufacture and sell a low-cost car, but nothing could be further away from the truth. You can’t just make a car affordable to the masses by making it out of cheap plastic and melted down washing-machines. It takes a lot of R&D and ‘out of the box’ thinking to make a seemingly simple, yet an unfathomably tricky proposition work in the real world. Taking all that into consideration, it is definitely not a cakewalk to make this budget product look stylish and appealing. But you never know, designers such as Callum or Murray could very well envisage such a product somewhere down the line.

The Megapixel concept by Tata, eye-catching a design, isn’t it?

This could very well become the Tata Pelican. Maybe. Hopefully. Look at those doors!

The Tata Pelican, if marketed well, could be everything that the Nano set out to be. We sure hope that, the ‘once upon a time’ dream of Ratan Tata to make an affordable, yet chic car, comes to fruition in the form of the Pelican. Obviously, don’t expect those fancy doors to make it to the production version of the car. Kindly let us know what you think of the Tata Pelican and the future of affordable, yet funky city runabouts in comment section below.