The world's cheapest car will make its commercial debut today. It has been a long journey for Tata Motors from warding off critics who scoffed at the idea of the Nano, to being caught in a political battle at Singur-the small car has come a long way. Possibly, this is a car that had the most tumultuous journey to reach its market. Now, the launch of the Nano is perhaps the most watched event in the auto world. (View the Tata Nano video)

There is quite a lot of excitement as all eyes are on the launch of the world's cheapest car-Tata Nano. The car will be launched in Mumbai on Monday. The two most important things that everyone has been looking forward to is, the actual price of the car and the cost of the car on road. We have been telling you that it would range anywhere between Rs 1.3 to Rs 1.8 lakh or 1.9 lakh depending on the variants, since it will come in three variants. Of course, the actual price will be announced on Monday. (View the Tata Nano picture gallery)

Other than this, the actual booking procedure of the car is going to be announced and that is critical, as millions of people are waiting to buy this car. But the hitch is its limited volumes currently; we understand that the wait could be quite long as there are production constraints. The company plans to reach a 70,000 units target only by the end of April 2010. Currently, they have just managed to build 800-900 or 1,000 cars so far.

There will also be a booking amount for the car and expected anywhere between Rs50,000-Rs60,000. But even after the booking amount, the real question would be that how long would a customer have to wait to get the car in his hands. That is going to be crucial.

All this queries are expected to be answered on Monday by the Tata Motors management. The real test would be whether this Rs 1 lakh car will be fuel efficient, even though the company says that it would give a fuel efficiency of about 23 km/liter, quality, fit, finish, features, along with the running and maintenance cost will also be critical.

Tracing Nano's journey
Today's a day, which will go down history as the day the world saw the commercial launch of its most affordable car-the Tata Nano.

The Nano is more popular as the Rs 1 lakh car. But it was not planned to be so! Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata  had just guessed a price to his planned low cost car way back in 2003 at the Geneva Motor Show. And a newspaper headline next day made him firm up that figure as the price target.

And, on January10, 2008, the world saw the Nano for the first time. Tata didn't lose the opportunity to take a dig at Suzuki, who had doubted the viability of the project.

The Nano has a strong potential. Tata Motors say this car can sell over a million units annually-that's the size of the entire Indian car market a couple of years ago!

Every car that Tata sells currently is built at its Pune plant. This plant is now getting more active because part of every Nano is being made here. That's because of the trouble it faced in the first location-Singur, which was chosen to build the Nano.

Tata chose an unusual location of Singur in West Bengal for the unusual car. No other carmaker-except the oldest Indian car company Hindustan Motors has West Bengal as its home. But before Nano's home could be built, the Rs1,700 crore project started facing tough opposition. That was the beginning of the delay of over six months for the car's launch.

Ratan Tata , chairman of Tata Motors said, ''The cars, as you can see, are four door, they will seat four to five persons, they are powered by a 33 horse power, 624 cc engine. In size, externally, it is approximately 8 per cent smaller, bumper-to-bumper, than the Maruti 800.''

Finally, Tata Motors had to pull out of Singur and started its search for a new manufacturing location. Vendors and Tata Motors suffered huge losses as 80% of the plant construction was complete.

And at last Tata Motors announced Sanad in Gujarat as Nano's new mother plant. But setting up a plant of this size would take at least 10-12 months and Tata could not delay his dream further. Keeping his promise to launch the Nano this fiscal, the company began manufacturing at its Rudrapur facility in Pantnagar. Though it has managed to produce just about 1,000 Nanos till date, the real challenge will now be to scale up its production capacity at Pantnagar and Pune before Sanand comes online. So, the wait for the launch is over but the road ahead promises to be just as challenging as the journey so far.

With inputs from CNBC-TV18's Swati Khandelwal.

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