Little car its hard not to love

If they'd asked me how I felt, I'd have said I'd rather be back in Pune designing motor vehicles," grumbled Clive Hickman, Tata Motors' head of engineering, about being the only Brit on the podium at the Tata Nano launch conference.

To find such curmudgeonliness at the heart of Tata's £1700 people's car came as a surprise. But then again, there are about 30 British Tata engineers at Tata's engineering centre in Pune at a time - as well as French, Italians, and, of course, scores of bright-eyed young Indian engineers and designers who did the core work.

It wasn't until the theatrics of the Nano launch were over and journalists were left to mingle with the team that put the car together, that it struck me again just how exceptional Tata's achievement is. When you see the pride this truly global team had in bringing the vehicle to launch, the negatives - Tata Motors' financial problems, the fact few will get the car until next year - seemed mere procedural difficulties.

And it wasn't just the Tata team. The expression on guests' faces as they squeezed into the seats of the four cars on display was one of indulgent delight. It's a car it's hard not to love. It has everything you need and absolutely nothing you don't, with styling you know will follow the Mini, the Beetle and the 2CV as small-car classics.

The Nano was designed for India, but it will become as global as Volkswagen's people's car. And there's more to come. Sandeep Karyakarte, technical chief of Tata's styling studio, joked that, for him, the Nano is already ancient history.

* Dubai's crash may be India's gain. The Muslim majority population of Chavakkad, in Kerala, has made so much money in the Gulf that its outskirts look like a tropical Surrey, all palm-shaded four-bedroom villas with dinky new cars outside. There's huge concern the popping of Dubai's bubble will mean all those migrant workers come flooding back.

It seems some businessmen are, too. In a plush bungalow, I met Jaleel Valiyakath, who now spends just five days a month in Dubai running his import-export business and the rest of his time back home launching in the Indian market. "Now people are starting to come back to India, it's time to start something here," he says. "I've decided to import things to India instead of importing from India."