The Maruti 800

This should have been the first blog, but I decided to give preference to the car closer to heart. Anyway, here goes, short and snappy like the car.

Maruti has to be given credit for kicking the Indian car industry into life with the help of the Japanese, who were happy to give us the dies for a car that they were going to phase out anyway. These dies belonged to the Maruti 800, a jolly three potter which is all to happy to chug along in the city giving superb mileage in return for (till recently) abysmal AC and ride. The Japanese are not to blame though, because they have pimple free roads where a hero ranger will give a limousine ride, but India is an altogether different story.

Maruti follows the simple strategy to never retire an old model and keep on stamping out cars as long as there is life left in the dies it has for that car model. After that when they are getting new dies made for the car, they tweak the design slightly and give the car a minor face-lift.

The above exercises has been able to keep the Maruti honest with the design trends uptil recently when the car seems to have been appearing slightly aged. I personally don't think that matters, because Hyundai is setting examples is selling ugly cars after getting them endorsed by ugly bollywood stars.

As for the drive, the 800 does not disappoint, especially if you look at the price tag. As cheap as a Bajaj Chetak to maintain, the comfort level has gone up a notch after it was donated an airconditioning unit by its great grand-daughter the Alto. The car is a joy in traffic as it has reasonable low end pep and is able to sneak into gaps with ease. If a couple of bikes leave the parking together, you can also sneak into the parking lot with comfort, a boon in the ill planned parking places in the NCR. The re-sale is strong too, aided in no short measure by Rahul Dravid like reliability and simplicity.

Salute to the car that kick started the industry here.

up next: A look at the Korean duo who were bold enough to bitch slap our auto industry into activity.

Under draft..

Yamaha RD350 and Palio 1.6 GTX reviews under draft :)

Mitsubish Lancer Cedia

The guys at Mitsubishi are real whackos. THey use the same engine and chassis to god knows how many means. The same 2.0 L that does duty in the Cedia in India producing 115 BHP cranks out a range of power outputs in models abroad. It can range from 133 BHP in non detuned-for-mileage version to 340 BHP in the Evo in the force fed turbo avtaar. Same applies to the chassis.

Why Mitsubishi did a hero honda kind of a job (detune engine for efficeincy) with a 2000CC car in India priced in the uppish band is tough to understand. I think they could have easily come out with e 200 odd BHP version and smoked the competition.

Anyway, this version is no slouch either, with the performance coming in plenty and strong. You can plod along the right side ok the 100 mark all day long (if you find the road to) and still dab the throttle to overtake the slowcoach ahead with ease. The hig-speed stability is superb and the car does not give you many anxious moments. Ride is in a class of its when compared to the Skoda Octavia (makes you feel every pimple on the road) or the Corolla (makes you feel nothing). Considering our raods, it always is tough to get a good ride/handling balance, and the Mitsubishi engineers have got is spot on with both the Lancer and the Cedia. The only company that does it better is maybe GM.

I do have a grouse with the company though. They sell two models with the same price tag. One has leather seats (in India weather - yikes!!!), chrome door handles and plain lights. The other has a sports kit (Only the visuals) and really smart head and tail lamps (replacement cost thrice that of the luxury Cedia's!!). Alloys, ABS and airbags are standard. The tires are 195/60 R14. I do not get the idea of selling a sport model which has the exact same power as the one you sell to 40 year old executives. We know that it is well within the capabilities of this engine to produce thrice the power it is pumping out right now. Maybe the lac rupees saved in leather can be spent to put in a VTech or a turbo charger. Also different chip programming would be welcome.

I am sure some of the owners would go in for these upgrades. I want a greddy engine chip, a turbo charger and a sports exhaust. Let's wait out the warranty period.

The Honda City

Those of you who are thinking that this review is about the City being sold presently are encouraged to leave this blog right now. If are asking for a reason, I am not offering one. Now back to the job at hand.

This car really begs to be punished. A real sadist, she comes into her own when you hoist the Taco above 4000 RPM and hold on for dear life (the car's road holding abilities are questionable). Razor sharp steering means that it permits you to be ridiculously stupid at high speeds. Extremely light weight translates to almost zero understeer.

And that is where the good bits end. You ended up paying a premium price considering what you got for your money. Grey interiors, bad stereo and a gear knob straight out of 80's Datsun. The airconditioning is over engineered, with reports of frostbitten drivers in June heat quite common. But hey, who cares when the service cost rivals the Marutis, the service quality beats the Mercs and the running costs put Santros to shame (read fuel economy).

The driving experience is - shall we say - enjoyable. You sit low with the steering right in your lap. Add to that an 8/10 gear shift plus a happy go slippary clutch, and you can for sure practice those snappy gear throws in real life. At any RPM, the engine is free revving, but comes into its own beyond the 4000 RPM, at which point the HC starts to behave like a crazed rottwieler. Put in a decent set of tyres, and this car will always put a smile on your face on a gloomy Monday morning.

HCs tend to be well taken care of, with Honda maintained central service records. The flux of new cars and a new model (and revision thereof) have brought down the prices. Planning to buy that 4-5 lac car? Stop right there.

Spend 3 lacs to pick up an old VTec, put in good tyres, A turbocharger, air filter and performance exhaust system. I am not proposing NOS, coz I love cars and am not an avid fan of blown gasket or dead drivers. The above mods will give you about 20-30% extra power plus faster take off from lower RPMs.

Long live the HC, I will sign off now, for all this writing has put me in the mood to do some driving.

Reviewing the magazines

There are n number of automobile magazines out today which carry out reviews of automobiles (cars n bikes) in India and at times abroad (leveraging their internations content tie-ups). They are all similarly priced and you'll find reviews of more or less same vehicals in them in any given month. So, what differenciates these magazines? Lets take a look.

First up, like all the cars are not reviewed by magazines, we will not review all the magazines. I am taking up AUTOCAR INDIA, TOP GEAR, AUTO INDIA, OVERDRIVE and BS MOTORING. While the first two are international mags that have come out with Indain editions, the last three are indigenous efforts. Autocar India launched itself by luring the star author/journo of Auto India and appointing him as the editor.

Auto journalists the world over are (more often than not) those who wanted to be automobile racers/designers/engineers, but couldnt. Thus the gut instinct leads them to have a bias towards looking for all things performance in a car designed for urban crawl. Keeping these facts in mind, let us take a look at what these magazines dish out.

Top Gear magazine has the advantage of drawing upon archives and talent of its well known parent. Their reviews are good where apart from the car's 0 to 100 times they also talk about drivability (3rd and 4th gear roll-on etc.). Another positive is that the performance figures that they give are obtained by them independantly with the manufacturer provided figures being discarded. The content is presented in a humorous way, and there are some genuinely funny artivles (e.g. how to jump out of a moving car).

On the flip side, they simply cannot live without bashing french cars and prainsing Aston Martin (british). Its to the extent that in a head to head comparison they will say that a Ferrari is way better in every department, but when it comes to a package, Astons are better!

Next up is AUTOCAR INDIA. This magazine comes up with the best scoops. You will find news about upcoming models in their pages about one issue before the others. Their reviews are reasonable, with due emphasis being laid on performance, drivability as well as the air-con's performance. Though they have a penchant for 'mega tests'.

BS motoring is another good magazine, but does nothing exceptionally well. The print quality, though is not great. They are politically correct and will find something good to say about an HM ambassador too, if they had to review one.

Auto India is at best a 'has been' of the list. Something went wrong, and they still can't figure out what. I personally think that the transitio npoint was Sorabjee's departure for Autocar India.

Now we come to OVerdrive magazine. Well, what can I say about this bunch. Lets take a look at their algorithm of writing:
1. Get a test car.
2. Give it a severe punishment by driving it like nuts. (It doesnt matter if it is a small city car meant for utilitarian urban commute)
3. Talk about 0-100 time.
4. Return the car, write a biased article about it.

A fact to be noted is that once a car has come back from an overdrive review, its battered to an equivalent of being violently raped by an American football team. Twice.
Their journos try and make performance cars out of swifts (well.. okay.. u can try that) by getting a free flow exhaust fitted! Thats it! No chip, header upgrades. Just a loud exhaust. LOL
Then when they review cars, they dole out utter crap without getting their facst write. Recent example: A road test involving the Skoda, Cedia, Corolla among others. They claimed that the skoda has a better ride than the others!!!! Plus the stereo in Cedia is 'some local make'. Man, I bet they couldnt figure out how to operate it.

Another common problem is the road tests. 0 to 100 is not the ONLY criteria. Especially for cars that are not Lamborghinis. There are more relevant things like 3rd gear 40-60 4th gear 50-70 etc. Also a review of Aircon performance. If you thrash a car around and then quote the fuel efficiency, that information is of no use to the end reader.

il primo blog

Fed up with the show off communities this blog will an attempt to take a look at the Auto scene in India. We will take an 'on the road' view and not som industry ho-halla.

From time to time, we will also attempt to arrange genuine drag events, where fools would be banned and there will be beer over the smell of rubber.

Let the good time roll, andiamo!!