India: Decades-Long Reign for Ambassador Comes to an End

[cpzilliacus]

Wall Street Journal: Decades-Long Reign for Ambassador Comes to an End

NEW DELHI–The Hindustan Motors 500 Ambassador–the frozen-in-time four-door that for more than a half-century defined India as sticking to its own automotive road map–has ceased production.

Based on the British-designed Morris Oxford of the early 1950s, the Ambassador boasts a rounded silhouette that has barely changed in decades. Once the favored car of India's politically powerful–and today instantly recognizable as a popular taxi in many big cities–its popularity declined as India's auto industry opened to more contemporary rivals.

On Saturday, Hindustan Motors Ltd. of Kolkata said it closed indefinitely the factory where Ambassadors were made. The company cited "low productivity, growing indiscipline, critical shortage of funds" and a "lack of demand for its core product the Ambassador."

[Stephane Dumas]

A big page of India auto industry had ended.
I saw another article on the Hindustan
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20140524/CARNEWS/140529883

When Mexican production of the Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle ceased in 2003, the car with the longest ongoing continuous production run (for the platform, not the model name) became the Morris Oxford II, which debuted in the UK for the 1954 model year and began production in India as the Hindustan Ambassador in 1958. In fact, if you consider the Oxford II to be a not-so-significant facelift of the 1948 Morris Oxford MO– as many do– then the Oxford/Ambassador surpassed the Beetle's all-time-record 65-year production run last year. Whether it's 66 years or just 60, the news today that Hindustan Motors has shut down the lone Ambassador plant comes as a shock to us.

[Scott5114]

"Growing indiscipline"? Closing a whole factory in part because the management can't get the employees to behave? Weird.