After more than 60 years of running with a sense of pride as one of the oldest Made-in-India cars, the production of Ambassador has been suspended. The car has been the preferred mode of transport for the government and even the taxi community.
Hindustan Motors (HM), the makers of the Ambassador, recently informed the Bombay Stock Exchange that due to very low productivity, shortage in demand and critical shortage of funds, the company has decided to suspend work indefinitely at its Uttarpara facility in West Bengal. The company took this drastic step to ensure that it “doesn’t bleed more money and to enable HM to draw plans for its revival.”
Ambassador, popularly known as Amby, was being manufactured there since 1957 and was based on the UK’s Morris Oxford.
The car could not just compete with the current modern automobile technology. The annual sales nose-dived from 24,000 units in the 1980s to about 6,000 in the 2000s. The sales hit the all-time low of sub-2,000 in recent times. The chunk of the numbers only came from the top brass of bureaucrats and from West Bengal where the car was still preferred to be used as taxis in large scale.
It is unlikely that HM will revive the fortunes of the Amby. And it is not the end the country’s oldest car manufacturer had expected.
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