Tiny Tata has all of Detroit talking

DETROIT -- The most talked-about car at the Detroit auto show is a car that isn't here, and isn't intended to ever be sold in U.S. showrooms.

It's the Tata Nano, a car that will cost just $2,500 and was unveiled last week at a car show in India. The bare-bones vehicle is meant not as an aspirational car but as a safer replacement for mopeds, which can even be seen carrying small families around neighborhoods in India.

Some say the Nano could be a revolutionary car that could change the developing world.

Even if it runs on just 7-inch wheels.

"Cars like that could be the new Volkswagen," says Ken DeWoskin, a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers' Detroit office. "They could have a huge impact on the world."

The Nano came up in conversations all over the North American International Auto Show here, and there were even rumors that it was on display in a small showroom in the basement of Cobo Hall, the area where the Chinese automakers and specialty carmakers have their stands.

The big automakers are taking notice.

"They are going to create a whole new market," says John Parker, executive vice president for Asia Pacific and Africa for Ford Motor. "It's a different mindset, a different attitude. They're going to break through the paradigms."

"In the developed world, we kind of miss the point," he says. "We think, 'How would that car do in a crash test?' But we miss the point that it's better than being in a crash in a two-wheeler."

As Tata Motors chief Ratan Tata explained in a press release last week: "I observed families riding on two-wheelers — the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family."