Sunday, May 22, 2005

More on the Swift. And Arsenal kicked some ManU ass. Yea!

The template needs to be worked on, eh? Damn, will have to get down to that sometime, too lazy on a Sunday morning.
Back to the Swift. KD, Maruti's PR man owed me a drive on the Swift. Before it got launched, so along with me, he called around six other journos (three from ET, one from PTI, Asian Age and FE) and called us to Manesar (I took Brotherman down because he is between sessions at DU), where we were bundled into four brand spanking new Swift's. I had seen the car ten days ago at the factory, seen it but not exactly tested it.
In some deserted roads in the Manesar industrial estate, we took the Swift (I was driving a dark grey one) and boy did we trash those cars around. In fact, one car had its clutch burn up (bad driving, not the car's fault). We had a decent one and a bit km stretch of road. The Swift has some very decent pick-up thanks to some new cogs. You can touch close to sixty on first and nearly reach 100 on second. I did 0-100 in 12.4 seconds, Hormazd (Autocar's ed), I believe did it in 11.6 seconds. Not too bad, I could do better. The road was not long enough to get to top speed, I managed to max out at 130 before I had to brake really hard (and thus engage the ABS system, which led to a smoking brake disc) to take a sharp U-turn at the end. And therefore discover the Swift's nicest feature, its sublime handling. The tyres tend to make a bit of a racket if you rev the car up for speed, but they grip the road hard. Really hard, no matter how fast you throw it into a turn. I took a sharp 90-degree left at 75k's and the car held on with all four wheels. I would never do that even in the old City-VTEC. The new 185/70R14 JK Vectra tyres are solid.
Good car, if they get the price right the car will do well. Very well. OK bijli's gone, will edit this post later.
Sorry, I took a long time to edit. Anyway, if there is one adjective to describe this car - I'ld use the term 'Spunky'.
Plus, Arsenal kicked ManU's ass in the FA Cup final. OK, so Rooney played brilliantly, but at the end of the end Arsenal won, and defeating ManU is all that matters.

No comments: