Early this month, I drove a Daewoo Matiz for roughly 30 minutes in the city of Rome. And for those 30 minutes, my machine and I were the centre of attraction _ that too, in a town that is not really short of attractions; where even the public toilets, forget the Coliseum and other relics, were built at least 1,800 years back.
Italians of all sizes and shapes, riding puny Gileras to spanking new Alfa Romeos, craned their necks to take a second, and at times, a third look at the Matiz. Just ask the Daewoo Italia people _ when they are not commuting between banks to put all their new-found money in _ and they would say of course, the big, small, South Korean automobile is selling well in Italy. Yes,
Italy _ the mother of all small car countries!
Italians are a passionate people. Now, that would be the understatement of the millennium. They like things beautiful. From kitchen sinks to tea-kettles and from medieval buildings to hair clips, you can see this predilection at work. And dear reader, when it comes to automobiles, they express this national obsession a little bit more. Italian car makers too noticed this trend early, and thus they created Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Maseratis and Lancias, which were simply beautiful first and sports cars next. Yes, they were impractical and difficult to live with but they looked right...and to the average Italian, if it looked right, it would run right.
But Italians were also great dreamers. They would dream Lamborghini and buy a Fiat. They would go miles to watch Ferarri win, knowing very well that they would never ever be rich enough to own a car wearing the prancing horse. Fiat, the conglomerate that has capitalised on this Italian passion for years, and one that owns all of the above marques today, minted money by making small cars. Even today, they sell the largest number of small cars in Italy. The Cinquecentos, and now the Seicentos, and at a higher level, the Unos and the Puntos, and these days, the Bravos and the Bravas, are cars that a nation full of dreamers buy and drive everyday. And now add to this list Daewoo Matiz. The Italians seem to just love the thing. In essence, Daewoo is suddenly cashing in on a market that Fiat thought they invented, developed, fought for and nurtured for one whole century...and one that they thought would be theirs for the next as well.
But that was not to be, as today, Daewoo has managed to capture three per cent of the two million cars
