Dogs go to Jag

But two dogs casually walked onto Jaguar's stand at this month's Delhi motor show and one had a crap. On the carpet. In front of Jaguar execs and press.

It was just one among the many aspects that set this show apart from every other one on the calendar. On the Chrysler stand at Delhi, one of the cars crashed through the floor.

Meanwhile, on the Ford stand, the Fiesta-based EcoSport SUV - due here in February 2013 - held its crowded debut beneath canvas and protected by six uniformed guards on each door.

While the presentation raged, two guys busily wiped down the EcoSport on the stand, finishing off by walking the crowd with their hands out, asking for money.

Ford's event managers knew nothing about the ``cleaners''. ``We didn't hire them - we have no idea where they came from,'' one event staffer says.

On the second day, after the motoring journalists had their fill, the public was let in. Ford's EcoSport proved the most popular - 700,000 people crammed in to see it on the first public day, sufficient for Ford security to close the doors as people were being trampled.

Outside, high security meant metal detectors and x-ray baggage scanners, but the streets of the show grounds were crawling with beggars.

Welcome to India and the Delhi motor show for 2011, where if you're a foreigner, the entry fee is high and the distractions range from dogs on the prowl, kids with outstretched hands, sari-clad showgirls (and the word `girl' is used cautiously) and some really neat concept cars.

There's no smiling welcome - while my shoulder bag plodded through the security scanner's conveyor belt, the screen operator was looking the other way, eating his breakfast - and no map to list where the manufacturer's are located.

The expanse of the motor show site - actually a series of outer industrial streets with cyclone fencing temporarily erected to channel visitors through the ticket boxes - indicates the breadth of products on display but most buildings are only partially utilised. But you have to walk each building to view its contents.

There are no press packs, no photographs of the vehicles on show and the representatives of the vehicle manufacturers are cautious with information - verbal or printed. There is no media centre and if you find a chair, best to carry it around with you because the alternative resting point is a dusty curb.

Coffee is from street vendors and though you may think impoverished Delhi is cheap, each cup was the equivalent of $4.

I heard a report about a guy who went into a filthy toilet for a leak and after rinsing his hands under the tap water, was confronted with a little kid holding a 10cm square tissue in one hand and the other hand out for money. 

The visitor declined the tissue. Walking back to the show, he saw dozens of squares of tissue on pegs on the cyclone fence. Clearly, after buying a tissue and chucking it in the bin, the boy then retrieves it from the bin, smoothes it out and pegs it ready for the next customer.

The visitor says he wouldn't have minded paying for the tissue if there was any attempt made at making the toilet clean. He says it was filthy with stains, sand and dust on the floor, rubbish in the corners and a smell like a ... er, urinal.

Even getting to the show is an exercise in tolerance - from pitying the families that live under a cloth cover on the dirt at the side of the highway, to the manic road conditions that yield to major indiscretions including multiple-vehicle lane sharing and travelling in the lanes of oncoming traffic.

Single-lane roads can become four-lane highways and moments later, return to a single lane. Cycling in the middle lane, while traffic whizzes past, isn't unusual. India's contrasts never fail to surprise. On the morning bus ride, on a dirty, dusty street that looked like the remnants of a fierce military battle, was parked a glistening $1 million-plus Rolls-Royce Ghost.

The show - about 25km from the heart of Delhi yet still well within its city limits that contain an impossible 21 million people - did convincingly capture the strength and unstoppable force of the future of India's vehicle industry.

India produces 3-million vehicles a year, most for domestic consumption. But by 2020 - yes, eight years time - the production is expected to hit 8-million vehicles with a ramp-up in exports.

Ford, for one, is investing $2 billion in factories - one new plant in the north-west and upgrades to its existing engine-car plant in the south-east. It is also lifting its workforce by 50 per cent at one plant, to 15,000 people.

Ford's India boss, country NSW-bred Michael Boneham, says growth for his company will be 60-70 per cent over the next eight years. "By 2020, one-third of Ford's global sales will be in Asia,'' he says. "It's currently one-sixth. India is as critical to Ford as is China or Thailand.

"But in India cars are smaller and so profit margins are equally smaller. So we have to work smarter.''

Ford only started exporting its Indian products last year. That car was the Australian-designed and engineered Figo (a five-door hatch) and sales were recorded in some adjoining Asian countries.

Late this year Ford expects Figo will become swamped by its 100-plus country export program for the Fiesta-based EcoSport SUV. "EcoSport is huge for us,'' Boneham says. "But it's only the start. We will have eight global products by mid-decade.

"The first is the Fiesta, the second is the EcoSport and I can't tell you the rest. All are on the B-segment platform - we're not doing bigger platforms here.''

The news is all good. The contrast is how a country that nonchalantly parades its poverty can have global ambitions as a major auto producer. But even a few stray dogs, paper-thin floors and crowds won't stop ambition quickly turning to reality.