One of the biggest problems about buying a car is that you often have to borrow a lot of money so that you can pay for one. In most cases new cars cost tens of thousands of dollars, a price that not everyone can afford.

In India car maker Tata Motors have brought out the cheapest car in the world: the Nano, first introduced in 2008. It costs only 2,500 dollars plus taxes. Tata director sees the Nano as a "People's Car", designed especially for India's lower middle classes, those whoearn less than 200 dollars a month.

India makes about 1.2 million cars a year and the idea of a cheap car for everyone makes some experts sceptical. More cars lead tomore traffic and more pollution, which also contributes to global warming.

One of the biggest trends in producing cars today is keeping them small so you can find a parking space quickly, running them with as little petrol as possible and having room for as many people as possible. This is exactly what the Nano combines. It is only 3 metres long and 1.6 metres tall but it still has four doors and room for five people.

 

The car is lightweight, the parts are glued together and there is only one windshied wiper instead of two. The Nano has a 30horsepower engine and a four-speed manual transmission, found at the back of the car, like the legendary VW Beetle. It reachesspeeds of up to 100 km an hour and needs about 2 gallons of fuel per 100 miles.

At 2,500 dollars you will only be able to buy the basic model of the Nano, without any extras. Air conditioning and other additionalfeatures would raise the price by about 4,000 dollars.