Automotive design... from India.

It is refreshing to see automotive designers from firms outside the major design houses in the United States and Europe (United Kingdom, Italy etc.). These designs are from well established markets and the designers have been around for a long long time. The good news is that now we are starting to see designs coming out from emerging markets like Russia, China and India. They may not have the heritage and experience as the older design houses but the diversity means greater competition, which in turn means better designs in the long run. We have chosen to highlight the most famous automotive design house in India, DC Design.

DC Design was founded in 1993 with the dual aim of redesigning and modifying mass market cars to create one-of-a-kind automotive beauties for automotive connoisseurs as well as offering design and prototyping services to the OEM automotive sector. DCD has produced more than 600 unique design cars and has also provided design and prototyping services to the likes of Aston Martin, Renault and GM. They have taken a step beyond what it is known and revered for, with its reveal of what is the country’s first ever sports car, the sleekly styled DC Avanti (attached picture).

DCD intends to go the way of so many Italian carrozzerias (like Bertone, Ghia, Pininfarina and Stola to name a few) who not only styled, designed and engineered enticing sports cars but also went on to make them in limited production runs for sale to the general public. DC will be doing just that with the Avanti which is being readied for a production run beginning in 2013. Everything will be done in-house right from the design and engineering to the production process. The Avanti supercar doesn’t reinvent the wheel in the basic process of manufacturing a high tech sports car because DC Design will be using proprietary parts from various carmakers. The Avanti will be powered by a specially tuned Ford EcoBoost 2.0 liter 4 cylinder turbocharged engine. Max power will be 240 HP and 270 ft lbs of torque. As a side note, the Avanti does have a little bit of an Audi R8 look from the front especially with those lights. Wonder who the LED lights manufacturer is.

As the famous saying goes, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". In this case, we don't expect any big leaps for mankind, but we hope the small step taken by DC Design will finally put Indian Automotive Design on the world stage.

The DC Avanti goes on sale in 2013 at a starting price of Rs. 30,00,000 (~$60,000). 

Here are the technical specifications of the DC Avanti.