It's easy to take the many conveniences in a modern car for granted. Think about it for a minute: Air conditioning makes the blistering summer heat bearable; power steering lets us navigate tight parking lots with ease; and airbags can actually save our lives in a nasty collision. But let's be honest, these features are all called conveniences for a reason; they are niceties, not necessities. You could do without them. The question is, would you want to?

India's Tata Motors believes you would. The company has made a big name for itself worldwide by building a car, the Nano, with almost no niceties. In fact, in stock guise, the Nano is more like a tin can on wheels than a typical modern automobile. However, it is inexpensive (a base-priced Nano runs around $3,000 in India), gets 52 mpg and seats four comfortably, making it an ideal urban runabout.

But is that enough to make this bare-bones econobox a viable low-cost option for city dwellers here in the U.S.?

Bing: Tata Motors

On the Road

Rather than have us drive the new 2010 Nano in its native land, Tata flew us to Germany — the home of high-powered, pricey, well-engineered sports cars and speed-limitless roadways — to take this little car for a spin. (We thought the location ironic, as well.)

Taking the Nano out on Deutschland's uberfast autobahn — or anywhere other than a closed test track, for that matter — was out of the question. The vehicle isn't certified for use in the Fatherland. It's worth noting that the Nano isn't street legal anywhere in the European Union or in the U.S.

Legal or not, we wouldn't have been too keen on driving the Nano on a superhighway like the autobahn, anyway. The vehicle is powered by a small 624-cc 2-cylinder engine that produces around 33 horsepower at 5250 rpm. Torque is 65 lb-ft at 3000 rpm. Translation: It's not fast, especially when accelerating from a standstill. That's not a desirable characteristic if you have to merge into high-speed traffic or need to make quick maneuvers to avoid a collision.

Our top speed in the Nano was 62 mph, and things got pretty scary at that speed. The trajectory of the little car is affected by all but the smallest breeze, requiring constant microscopic corrections of the steering wheel to keep it straight. You can credit the Nano's light weight (1,323 pounds) and tiny tires (135/70R12 up front and 155/65R12 in the rear) for the instability.

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Before you start laughing about the ridiculously small nature of the Nano's components, remember that this is a ridiculously small car. For that reason, it doesn't need things like 4-wheel disc brakes with ABS to stop. Instead, Tata equips the vehicle with 4-wheel drum brakes to save money. Not ideal, we know. However, we didn't experience any brake fade or loss in stopping power with repeated use. Even so, coming to a quick stop was one of the more harrowing experiences we had during our test drive.

You see, as you jam the brakes, the vehicle's weight flies forward and there's something of an unloading in the rear. The sudden weightlessness in back causes a weird yaw moment, in which you're utterly unsure which way the car is going to slide. It's tough to predict, and the engineer riding with us wasn't about to let us repeat the test.

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