M&M or Tata Motors: What’s your auto play?

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Editor's note: If your vehicle’s performance is all you care about, driving in city traffic can be a great leveller. It won’t matter if you have the fastest car: There is a good chance that your poor cousin will catch up with you at the next signal. He may even edge ahead of you several times. The winner in getting from point A to point B can be just unpredictable. But then, I’m sure that won’t determine what car you eventually buy. A similar analogy may well be playing out between two of India’s oldest automobile companies, Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, battling to make sense of the country’s economic growth. The former was always the bigger one, making trucks, buses and, later, India’s first-ever passenger car. The latter always played at the fringes, making utility vehicles that for the longest time didn’t bother about who they were meant for—passengers or goods.  Just before the global financial meltdown, at the end of 2007, Mahindra was valued at Rs 21,600 crore, while Tata, which was just days away from launching the much-hyped …