- The Maharaja of Patiala (Punjab) imported the first motor car into India in 1892. It was a French De Dion Bouton steam powered two cylinder tricar.
- In 1893 the American Ransom Eli Olds obtained his first export order, a 4 wheeled Olds steam car which was despatched by ship to India – but it didn’t arrive. The ship sank on the way there.
- It was the first car ever exported from the United States.
- There is a report that the first car was driven in Calcutta in 1896. What model?
- Mr Foster owned a car in Bombay in 1897. What model?
- In 1898 a car was brought into India by H Hewitt. What model?
- In about 1901 three Curved Dash Oldsmobile models were brought into India and sold to Jamshedji Tata, founder of the Tata Group of Industries, Rustam Cama, an attorney and Kavasji Wadia of Bombay Garage.
Pestonjee B Press formed a company called the Fort Coach Factory in Bombay in about 1878 to produce carriages for horse drawn vehicles.
By 1908 the company was the most prestigious manufacturer of carriages for horse drawn vehicles in India, supplying them for use by members of the Indian and British aristocracy.
In 1905 Pestonjee B Press’s son Jehangir studied motor manufacturing with various companies, including the British Daimler Company and the French Brazier Motor Car Company.
By 1906 Pestonjee B Press and his son had “installed the newest machinery and plant for the making and repairing of any style of motor body works”.
Later that year the company had started to construct bodies for car chassis’s imported into India from the Brazier Company. What other cars did the company fit its bodies to?
In circa 1908 the Fort Coach Factory exhibited at the Bombay Motor Show.
The company ceased operating in 1955. History of the company between 1908 and 1955 required.
There were reputed to have been 1,025 cars in Bombay in 1910.
- Goodyear set up India’s first tyre plant in 1920 (followed by Firestone a few years later).
- In 1926 the Ford Motor Company of Canada established India’s first Automobile assembly plant. Was it to produce the Model T Ford? Note: About 22,000 Model T Fords were supplied to India by Ford of Canada.
- Two years later, in 1928, Chevrolet/GM set up an assembly plant in Sewree. The first car produced was the 24.7 hp National Series AB Touring model. What other models were made between 1928 and 1954?
- GM and Ford stopped car production in India in 1954.
- In 1930 the number of imported and cars assembled in kingdom exceeded 30,000.
- Hindustan Motors produced 26,263 automobiles in 1995.
- India produced 500,301 cars in 2001 and 1,056,881 in 2005.
