The first Nano cars from Singur, had they been allowed to roll out on schedule, would have been a bright red in colour. “We painted three cars barely 15 days ago, and engineers from Pune approved it. We have already supplied the first batch of 500 litres of red paint to Tata,” Subir Bose, managing director of Berger, India’s second-largest paint manufacturer, said.

Kolkata-based Berger has a Rs-50 crore business with Tata, and supplies paint to the company’s Jamshedpur and Ranjangaon plants. “At Singur for the Nano car, we got the contract to supply red paint. We were to supply 1,000 litres in all, which would have painted 300 cars,” Bose said.

Red is possibly the most popular colours for small cars. The first batch Nanos would have been in six colours including, besides red, white and metallic silver.

Bose says he is “very saddened” by the Singur deadlock and the possibility of a Tata pullout. “But,” he says, “I am an optimist. Hopefully, people will see reason and pull back from the brink.” The future for the Little Red Car isn’t all dark, he says.