“The Zest will really speak for itself”

Tata Motors is poised to get back into the mass passenger car market with a string of strong products starting with the Zest compact sedan and then the Bolt hatch.

Tim Leverton, President and Head, Advanced and Product Engineering, Tata Motors has been busy with the birthing of these cars.

He spoke to Business Line exclusively about the Zest, which is due out later this month. Here is his description about the Zest’s design and engineering recounted in first person, as told to this writer:

From our Auto Expo presentation, really the three pillars we have been following in the product are design next, drive next and connect next. This is really the foundation of our product positioning and we are aware that we have a portfolio plan that runs out for the next few years. The Zest is really the start of the pipeline of products that are coming through to the market place.

There are two aspects here. One is the updation of the face of the car to be more contemporary in its interpretation of what Tata’s identity is. Prathap Bose and his team have worked to understand what are the things that the Tata brand stands for and then move into a new interpretation.

So, what we call, the Humanity line and the Trust line at the front now reinterpret the earlier car’s smile. These lines join the lamps and create the face of the car. They also change the visual and the proportions of the car to make it look wider and more planted, balancing the front look of the car.

The second point is the way the side of the car has been treated and to have much more movement into the styling lines and the features at the side. The dropping line that comes from the rear haunches to the nose is giving the car more forward orientation. We have also worked on the wheel and tyre relationships to the body and the car looks more planted, dynamic and with more energy, even standing still.

On exterior design, this is the sort of design direction we will move in. It has been seen in some of our concept cars as well. “It is a younger more accessible image, I think.” This will follow through in the other products.

On the interior, we have really gone for a much greater attention to detail in terms of the finish and the surface design, but also for the textures and flourishes that you see. The Zest’s is an elegantly profiled cockpit and instrument panel, and really flow with the way we have integrated the infotainment screen and the new steering wheel. It’s even down to the size and the profile detail forms around the steering wheel, for example.

I’ve just driven the new Zest from the Mumbai airport to the Pune plant and I think we have got the sense of interior harmony overall in the comfort of the driving position and the changes to the seating. We’ve now got better support and comfort in these better finished seats.

All of these subtle and individual elements with the attention to detail come together, which is quite unique to this car. There is a sense of premium about it. There is also the detailed use of chrome and piano black finishes, which is very modern.

We brought together a number of elements that makes the driving experience a pleasure. The first, of course, is the Revotron engine. We’ve really moved to do something different with our gasoline engines. And the idea has been to bring a higher torque solution to this segment by using a turbocharger and by bringing some of the downsizing technology. We have done some innovative designing of the engine components themselves to try and bring them together with the turbocharger and deliver 140 Nm of torque, which is a step higher than any other car in the segment so far.

And then we have combined that with a multi-drive mode system, which allows you to choose between a city drive mode for slow-moving traffic or a sports mode for the highway or a fuel-efficient ECO mode. What we are trying to do with that solution is not just balancing those three focuses, but also refinement and NVH levels. Part of the driving pleasure in Zest will also be the cabin’s quietness.

We have also done a lot of work on the dynamics of the car. We have always been relatively well-known for the ride quality of our cars. But, we have now improved the ride further and also worked on the handling of the car.

There is a new electronic power steering system which matches what the driver’s expectation is very nicely.

The body control is very good too and whether it is in the city or at high speed cruising on the highway, the car feels relaxed and in control. The controls themselves, whether it is the gear-shift, the clutch, the throttle mapping, the braking response etc., have all been worked on extensively to balance them in both the petrol and the diesel versions.

Early on in the fine-tuning of the dynamics, we worked in partnership with a small British company called Randle Engineering. They worked with us to really help us understand what we wanted the behaviour of the car to be. Then together we worked out the suspension and its geometry. For eg., the entire front suspension geometry is pretty much completely revised and has been done to optimise the steering handling and the impact of poor roads.

We have gone to dual path suspension struts at the front, which separate longitudinal and vertical forces to optimise control over the attenuation of the wheel. We have also looked at the travel of these forces to the sub-frame to choose the right bushes that can handle them. At the rear, we have gone for stiffer mountings and improved the characteristics of the twist beam. The braking has also been improved.

A lot of the changes are based on engineering targets that were in turn set up based on customer feedback.

Though we have worked on the same X1 architecture that we started with, for the new cars too, the new changes have helped deliver a 50-kilo weight reduction. This has been achieved by optimising component design and transferred some of the processes for getting this right from the hugely successful JLR team.

The diesel engine will be the Fiat powertrain and we will also have an automated manual transmission (AMT) on offer with this unit.

In terms of connectivity, I think we are finally moving into a phase where the customer is expecting to be connected all the time. To do that we need to offer a platform in the car which the customer can patch into and connect his mobile device easily.

We have done that by signing up with Harman and bringing in a very nice interface design together with some good functionality in a touch-screen. It is a platform that will set a new standard in the segment and can be developed further for the other products. “For eg., this morning I got my text message read out to me. I didn’t have to take my eyes off the road”.

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