The Making Of The Perfect Car For Pakistan

If you look at the automotive scenario in Pakistan you’re going to find that it’s not that great here. You basically have three companies Toyota, Honda and Suzuki that primarily dominate the market here. And let’s be honest there’s not one car you can point to in their line-up and say that’s probably the perfect car for Pakistan. People have long complained about their various models being overpriced, outdated, uncomfortable, uneconomical and so on and so forth. Recently we have seen the company FAW try to gain a market share here in Pakistan and with talks of Volkswagen planning to come to Pakistan it seemed like the perfect time to go over and discuss what would theoretically be the best car for Pakistan, going over all the various aspects of the car and deciding what would be best suited for the market here.

Design 

Car manufacturers need to know that the people of Pakistan greatly care about the aesthetics of the car. We no longer want cars that take shapes that are less graceful than a 20 year old refrigerator; a classic case in point being the Suzuki Mehran. Car manufacturers should not be afraid to take risks, you can create a car that is visually pleasing to the eye and yet at the same time it being generally affordable for the mass market. Take the Ford Fiesta as an example. A great looking car for not very much money. Basically my point is that it is possible to engineer a good looking car in such a way that it doesn’t drive costs up. So for the perfect car for Pakistan we would want a car designed to be beautiful in such a way that whenever we see it, it would lift our spirits up on a dull Monday morning.

Practicality

Practicality is very important, how many times a day do you see 6 to maybe even 7 full sized adults sitting in a car that was designed to ideally take 4 people. For the perfect car you would want a car that offered the maximum amount of interior space with the least exterior size and at the same time it would not compromise on luggage space. Now this is easier said than done because you can’t really have a huge amount of space in a small hatchback, things like the transmission and suspension have to go somewhere. So to start off with the ideal bodyshell, it should be of a four door saloon because it’s the best option for a densely populated market. And with that making small minor adjustments such as making the rear seats a couple of cm or even an inch wider can make a good deal of difference or increasing the dimensions of a car by a fraction can greatly increase interior space as well as luggage capacity making it a great choice for an overcrowded country such as Pakistan.

Power

Now we come to the part that’s going to power this theoretical perfect car. These days turbocharging has become the norm, almost every single mainstream car manufacturer outside of Pakistan has started to adopt the use of using turbocharged engines in their vehicles as they give a good deal of power while being eco-friendly and gas sippers. The Pakistani market wants a car that is economical but at the same time they also want something that gives decent performance. So a 4 cylinder turbocharged engine would be an ideal fit. Power around 160bhp would be ample for a mid-sized saloon and it would ideally give somewhere in the region of 13-14 km/l.

Reliability and Maintenance

The last thing the general population wants is a car that breaks down every other day and always costs a fortune to get repaired (sounds a lot like the Suzuki Cultus). Now ideally what you would want is a car that was extremely reliable and generally offered quite cheap maintenance. One way would be to use high quality parts and materials that just never go wrong along with increasing the time between service intervals but what that going to do is drive the price of car up as well as maintenance costs when it eventually is serviced and vice versa. Yes, the car would be cheaper but it would require maintenance a lot more often, so what you would ideally want is to strike a balance between the use of high quality parts and materials and maintenance costs and intervals. By using parts that are of adequate specification and acceptable cost you can have a car that will generally be reliable day to day but won’t require maintenance every so often and won’t break the bank when it does.

Now all of this is entirely theoretical and based on one person’s opinion. I do realise the fact that it is quite easy to express these ideas but extremely difficult to implement but that said, it is not impossible and there should be a car company out their working to achieve these goals whether it be Volkswagen or Toyota or even FAW for that matter to bring out the Perfect Car For Pakistan.

If you have any opinions about what would be the Perfect Car For Pakistan be sure to let us know in comments section down below.