Meera to Nano
by CARAZOO INDIA
Every person dream has dream in their life to do something memorable in life so did Shankarrao Kulkarni. Tata��s dream car Nano took its shape and even before its launch commercially and received a lot of recognition and is still the talk of the town. But more than that, the Nano has brushed up the memories for the third generation Kulkarni from Ichalkaranji, Kolhapur.If everything was on the right track, then fifty years ago, ultra cost small car would have already be on the roads. In 1975 Shankarrao, like any other normal person possessed a dream of making small car for the masses with the price tag of Rs.12, 000 and in the year 1949 he created a prototype and over the next two decades he improvised five more models. And the model was introduced in the year 1970, was a fully working model of his dream mini car and was much smaller than the Tata Nano. Hemant Kulkarni (grandson of late Shankarrao) said that his grandfather was very much obsessed with automobiles and had developed the idea of making small car giving it a name called ��Meera�� . Meera was verisimilar to Nano in terms of engine placement, wiper, seating capacity as well the same in terms of fuel economy too.
A well versed in auto engineering, Shankarrao was working under Kirloskars with a team of 10-15 people handling different parts of the car. All components of the car, including the engine were made locally and some parts like the tires were sourced from Ceat, the electric components were from Lucas, while the glass products came from Ogale Glassworks. It was Mr. Kulkarni idea of introducing rubber suspension, adjustable ground clearance, three doors and tilting wheels in a four-wheeler, for the first time in India. In 1949, the first model of small car project- a two-seater was out in the in 1949, and in the year 1951 three seater was introduced. Meera was all set to hit the roads and had also tied up with companies to make spare parts available and was waiting for the government approval as it was controlled by the government. Meera flaunted herself at the Gateway of India with beauty. But alas! The car was not launched commercially and the red tape and bureaucracy were responsible, according to Hemant Kulkarni. Later he approached the central government but by then Suzuki also ventured into Indian and he lost the battle. With more than Rs 50 lakh of investment on the car at the development stage and Shankarrao��s dream came to a still and the small car dream eventually remained as a dream itself. By now ��Meera�� was known to the Ichalkaranji and also attracted a lot of crowd at the Belgaon engineering exhibition.
Now with the Tata��s small car making its debut, the Kulkarni��s are now happy that their grandfather��s dream is being realized and the family plans to pay homage to Shankarrao on his birth centenary on January 26.
Related Article: Nano to super Nano http://blog.carazoo.com/2008/01/nano-to-super-nano.html
