Will Tata's Rs 1-lakh car be named 'Jeh'?

The most watched car in the Indian car space — the Rs 1-lakh offering from the Tata Motors stables — is still unnamed, but company sources here believe that `Jeh' is emerging as the 'most favoured name'.

"It has always been our Chairman Mr Ratan Tata's dream to name one of the cars after J.R.D. Tata," says one official, and what better tribute to the late patriarch of the Tata Empire, than naming the car project that symbolises the realisation of yet another dream, after him?

The car, the prototype of which is ready at the Pune plant, is a four-seater with a 630 cc, four-stroke, two-cylinder rear engine and is scheduled for roll out from the Singur plant in West Bengal in 2008. Both petrol and diesel variants are on the cards with a one-year phase out for the latter.

Other launches

Meanwhile, the company's first launches in the new fiscal will be the Sprint, a pick-up van that is slated for an April SOP (start of production) followed by the soft-top, passenger version of the Ace, variously described as a `tum-tum' or a variant of Maruti's Omni.

The Sprint, a derivative of the original Tatamobile, and the current Telcoline, is a diesel vehicle with CRDi technology that will comply with Euro III norms, and come in two configurations — single cab and double cab. According to company sources the vehicle is also tipped for manufacture in Thailand from next year, and at Fiat's plant in Cordoba, Argentina, where it will be produced with a Fiat engine and sold in Brazil and Argentina through the Fiat dealer network. The target, here is reportedly 20,000 units annually.