This little oddity is the people's car of the 21st century. The Tata Nano will offer the dream of personalised transport to the millions of people in India who can afford 100,000 Rupees. This equates to just $2,815 Australian. And it's quite a normal car, considering - the entire bodywork is made of sheetmetal, like a normal car, it's safe enough to be a normal car, and is roomy enough to be a normal car. It even has four doors and four seats! At just over 3 metres long, this would have to be one of the most efficient uses of space I've ever seen.But I'm wary of Tata's Nano. Soon, millions upon millions of people will own this car, when ordinarily they would never have had enough money to buy a car. 350,000 Nanos will be built every year. At just 100,000 Rupees, so many more Indians will have a car. Millions and millions more Indians will be able to heavily contribute to global warming, and clog up the streets of India, and contribute to the frightening Indian road death toll.

This is obviously an arrogant and elitist point of view - I don't consider it wrong for any Australian to buy a car, and yet I think of denying Indians the privelige we have. The privelige of owning a car, and creating a global greenhouse problem. We should have known that eventually, the problem of petrol-powered cars will reach an epic scale - but the advent of the Nano makes it all the more real. Machines that destroy the environment are being made and used on a massive scale, and although I do love these machines (I am an automotive enthusiast after all) I can't help but feel morally obligated to voice my concerns.The green cars (electric, hydrogen fuel-cells, whatever) need to save us. We need to be able to buy them, and quickly. Cars like the Tata Nano are absolutely brilliant, but they're fatally flawed - not just by their CO2 emitting potential, but by their mass-production. Usually, I would delight in showing you all the laughable facts about this car, but the truth is, I'm sad about the release of the Tata Nano. I feel the forbidding of mother nature.FACTOIDS

• Drive system: Front Wheel Drive
• Transmission: 4 Speed Manual
  
• Number of doors: 5
• DIMENSIONS
  • Overall length: 3,099 mm
  • Overall width: 1,495 mm
  • Overall height: 1,652 mm
  • Wheelbase: 2,230 mm
  • Tread
    • Front: 1,325 mm
    • Rear: 1,315 mm
• CAPACITIES
  • Seating capacity: 4
  • Luggage capacity
    • Rear seatback raised (VDA method): 135 L
      
  • Fuel tank capacity: 15 L
    
• ENGINE
  
  • Number of cylinders: 2
    
  • Piston displacement: 624 cm3 (0.6 Litres)
    
  • Maximum output: 26kW @ 5,250 rpm
  • Maximum torque: 48 Nm @ 2,500-4,000 rpm
• PERFORMANCE
  • Maximum speed: 105 km/h
  • 0-100 km/h: Probably quite a while
    
  • Fuel consumption (Average): 4.2 l/100 km
  • CO2 emissions (Average): 101 g/km

NEWS: India's Tata Nano Heralded As "World's Cheapest Car"