In earlier days there were a few car models available in India. Ambassador and Fiat were the only two models that were manufactured in India and rest of the models had to imported. In 1980s Government of India launched Maruti in collaboration with Suzuki of Japan.

Maruti revolutionized Indian car industry in a big way. But the main push for Indian automobile industrycame after 1991 in the post liberalization era. Industrial guidelines and investment climate was made more investor friendly. This prompted all the big automobile players such as Hyundai, Mitsubishi, General Motors, Honda, Maruti Suzuki, Tata, Audi,  Mercedes et al. to invest in India and today most of the car models that are available elsewhere are also available in India.