Numbers. Facts and figures. Data. Call them what you will, but the simple truth is that they are the only way to convey the scale of the Maruti Suzuki car-making operation in India. Fancy things like adjectives, metaphors, clever words and phrases simply won’t work. So here goes, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Maruti Suzuki factory at Gurgaon in Delhi builds one car every 16 seconds. That’s 3,500 a day, some 62,500 a month. Just let that last number sink in for a second. In 2013, 750,000 cars will roll off the production line, and to build them, Suzuki will have to find 487,500 tonnes of steel. Each car leaves the factory with five litres of fuel on board, which means that the facility will slurp though 3,750,000 litres just getting the cars out the door in one year alone.

Pictures: Justin Leighton

This feature first appeared in Top Gear magazine