Book review: Santro's story, from the driver's seat

Mr Subbu said the Santro's Zip Drive version was the first small car to have a power steering

Santro

The Car that Built a Company

B V R Subbu

Hachette

254 pages; Rs 599

Old-timers at Maruti still sigh: “Had we launched the WagonR earlier, there would have been no Santro.”

There almost wasn’t. The two exhibition prototypes of the Santro that arrived in India to be presented at the 1998 Auto Expo were damaged, thanks to the less-than-ginger cargo handling. Dilip Chhabria, ace car designer, stepped in to make them suitable for exhibition.

That Expo became a high-water mark for automotive shows in these parts. It also saw the Tata Indica crawl out of a giant oyster, and Daewoo took the covers off