From Here You Can Sierra

Looks alone can’t tell you if an automaker has matured enough to compete outside its home market successfully against premium competition, but I’ll argue there’s a strong correlation. Tata’s current lineup looks generically modern, a collection of common attributes like divorced headlights, slim DRLs, and various C-pillar treatments used by many automakers. Few are unique. But Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover, which has been a premium brand catering to premium buyers on a global scale. Certainly some lessons about how to appeal to buyers outside of the local market must have percolated back to Tata’s core range. The new Tata Sierra SUV looks, well, really good.

Now, Tata has had a rough go of selling cars in other markets. It pulled out of South Africa a while back and just reentered the market recently, having trouble competing against Japanese and Korean automakers in the low-cost tiers. Its early attempts at sales in the UK were equally dismal. Reviewers of the original Sierra’s replacement, the Safari, found it to be grossly unsuited to local tastes despite a very attractive price. It probably didn’t help that the original Sierra—Tata’s first passenger vehicle—and the Safari were both generic even by 1990s standards.

The Sierra is an icon in its home market, however, and so the new Sierra has that difficult job of recalling its predecessor without becoming a caricature of it. In that respect, the Sierra is a success. Take the rear doors. The original was a two-door SUV with large rear side windows that curved up into the roof a bit, very similar to the Ford Bronco II. (Like the Bronco II, it was based on a cut-down compact pickup chassis.) The new Sierra obscures the rear doors somewhat with some clever blacking-out of the C-pillar and the roof. Credit Tata’s design team led by Martin Uhlarik for finding a way past homage into artful reinterpretation. 

I’m strongly of the opinion that “it’s the product, stupid.” Even brands without a strong reputation of success can get the buzz they need from a compelling vehicle. For whatever else Tesla is and was, the Model 3 paired a great design with a fantastic price, and it sold very well. And it’s a sedan. Meanwhile, I saw an article today about still-unsold new Fiat 500Xs.