K’s Honest car Reviews Part… Something, anyway they’re back after a long time

One of the few pleasures of living in South Delhi is that every once in a while you can drive like a man possessed – or basically like the folks in West Delhi when they come to the South. The problem is that the once in a while moments usually are too few and far between. After much careful analysis the reason behind the decline of driving is not Sheila Aunty’s hare-brained BRT Corridor, I swear I will kill the next Leftie who says ‘But it works in Bogota!’ Rush jobs in public transport are screwing traffic flows across the city, anyway even though a easy-fix to the BRT problem would be to ban auto-rickshaws and commercial vehicles, but I don’t want to get too far involved in a rant that someone will say is directed against public transport.
I just hate stupidly planned schemes, but then again, doesn’t everyone. But more than the BRT, I should direct my ire at Bajaj Chetak drivers. The child-molesters who drive the worst piece of Indian automotive engineering after the Reva drive with no care for anything else on the road. I don’t dislike Hero Honda drivers, nor do I hate cyclists or the dimwits who weave around in their Pulsar’s. No, the Bajaj Chetak is the single most horrible thing on the roads. The guys will try and force their way virtually everywhere, have no respect for whose paint their rusting footrest scrapes against.
Even though Rajiv Bajaj should be credited for creating a product that proves Darwin’s theory (the Pulsar – I’ve seen far too many accidents on Pulsar’s and pretty much every one is because of idiotic driving, but what would you expect from the average Pulsar driver) I’ve actually personally thanked him personally because he withdrew the Chetak from production. And he allowed Lintas-Lowe to create some pretty kinky new advertising – even though the Benecio Del Toro lookalike in their new advert is bit bizarre.
OK, I was supposed to be reviewing something and it is the Honda Jazz, which for the purpose of this review we will call the ‘Seven Lakh Small Car’ (SLSC) given that journalists are the latest victims of abbreviation-itis. OK, but then again as some comments can’t help but claim I’m a lazy pile of bull-turds, so since I’ve been dubbed a bad journalist I’ll stick to calling it the Jazz.
The reason there are almost four hundred words of filler text is that it is incredibly difficult to justify this car. The reason Honda has priced it at the price they have isn’t because it is incredibly well-engineered and loaded with goodies, which it undeniably is. Honestly, the interiors on this car are the best for any small car on Indian roads save the Fiat 500. The reason Honda has priced it so insanely high is because the financial crisis has hit them hard forcing them to slow down the start of their new plant. So the Jazz is essentially a car that pretty much completely imported from Thailand and put together by a bunch of robots in Greater Noida.
The one thing I fear that they have changed for India is the gearbox, which means that the car ends up with little perceptible power off the line. To get the best out of the engine you’ll need to keep revs well past 3000. There are two stretches of road in the capital, the first the Greater Noida Expressway is a straight line road, and is best enjoyed in something made in Germany or Italy. The second is a lovely twisty road, which unfortunately isn’t quite up to the mark anymore. The Jazz disappointed on both these roads. I’m not saying it was bad, but for the price you could definitely have a lot more fun.
I know this is a terribly stupid thing to do on public roads, especially on public roads where people don’t quite follow rules and random trucks suddenly decide to drive on the wrong side of the road, but occasionally I do throw a car into a turn. Not enough to lose traction, but enough to have a nice time. And the Jazz kept its bearings, but felt quite bored doing it - it isn't as if the car is wobbles through corners, it is assured but there is little feel to it. The car is extremely practical in most respects - interior space is brilliant and fuel economy is surprisingly good - despite my sometimes map-cap shifting and obsession with second and third year to get the car moving, it delivered an impressive 14 k's to a litre.
But it is a SLSC and for that much money it is horribly mediocre. Decent car, but absolutely not worth the price!

Not a Nano tale!

“"You cannot run a plant with police protection, you cannot run a plant when bombs are being thrown, you cannot run a plant when workers are being intimidated"
Ratan Tata, Kolkata, October 3, 2008


This is not an academic piece, but something I am writing based on my experiences of what I saw. I did not see the massive protests engineered by Mamta Banerjee and her cohorts – which surprisingly included the erudite and (I once thought) smart Derek O’Brein (If you are a industrial house, you might think about hiring him again - and given how RNT holds grudges, I doubt a Tata company will have him on their New Years cards list). I hope I’m proved wrong, but today’s announcement means that West Bengal has managed to shoot itself in the foot, actually shoot itself in both feet.

About six weeks ago, before the onset of Mamta Banerjee’s mad obsession to sit in Writers Building got the better of her, I went to the site of the now erstwhile Tata Nano plant in Singur. What I saw was a textbook example of a violent minority taking over the agenda. Listen, I am all for rabble-rousers, if we claim to be a vibrant democracy we need crackpots, because behind their ramblings and their incessant need to have television cameras pointing at them, they so make sense and they do stand up for people who may not have a voice otherwise. Yes, even Arundhati Roy, who makes me wince just as much as Sarah Palin makes others wince.
But Mamta had virtually no locus standi, because, and this bit is true, I will narrate a bit from my rather memorable meeting with Bacharam Manna, Mamta’s local leader at the site also the vice-chairperson the Singur Administrative Block. Now, I wish I could narrate this in my probashi Bangla, and even have Manna’s rustic accent, but you will have to imagine…

“So you will protest?”
“We will protest even if we have to celebrate Durga Puja on the highway.”
“But why protest? I’ve seen local Trinamool leaders support the project because they are making money through the ‘syndicate’?”
(Note: The ‘syndicate’, was a group of local men, mainly displaced farmers from Beraberi, the main panchayat impacted by the Nano project – 70 per cent of the land was from this village – who put together the funds from the land and started supplying the constructors of the Nano plant with construction equipment, even though it was often illegally mined sand and rocks. And as many of these guys told me, they made a killing, much more money than they ever would have from the land.)
“So what? We don’t want this kind of industry.”
“So you want this area to stay poor?”
“No we want industry.”
“Huh?”
“Not this kind of industry, we want agricultural-led industry”
“What sort of agricultural industry, food processing?”
“There are a lot of potatoes that grow here, in Russia they make Vodka from potatoes, we will make Vodka!”
(Eiyekhane anok aloo hoye, tumi ki jano Russia te oora aloo theke Vodka banaye. Amaraoo eiyekhane Vodka banabo! – that is as good a transliteration I can make)


Now, this really happened.
I kid you not, this really happened. I know that journalists should rarely be trusted, but I’m not lying. I might lie about running late for meetings or to girls on why I stood them up, but that is a guy thing.

I have done some strange interviews in my career, and until August my strangest episode had been interviewing (hardly) Vijay Mallya in the Andaman Sea off Havelock Island (I mean ‘IN’ the sea with waves crashing around and various Swimsuit models skipping around) but as far as surreal sentences go, this one is one of them that really takes you aback (Ironic that I managed to bring up Vijay Mallya when I thought of Vodka – instant association). This is one of the answers that make you sit back on a ratty old chair and try and rummage your brain for a response.

And mine was…

“But nowadays most Vodka is made from grain…”
(Kintu aajkal beshibhag Vodka gom theke hoye – not exactly Katie Couric interviewing Sarah Palin)

“What are you saying?”
“I’m serious”
“But in Russia, they do it that way.”
“I don’t think they make too much Vodka from potatoes”

The next few minutes of the interview was on the relative merits of Vodka, where I couldn’t really argue. I mean, I like a good Vodka Martini just as much as the next bloke, well maybe not in this case, but sometimes you just get thrown a curveball. So, this guy actually suggested that the car be given up for booze, maybe there was some sense there – get smashed so you don’t need to go out in the first place. But then again we live in a country where there is still a ‘Directorate of Prohibition’, what can you say.

Back to the point, I really did meet many, many people who supported the project, and not on the main road, I bothered to drive through some really terrible roads and met villagers across the affected villages. Yes, occasionally you met people who did not support the project and wanted their land back.
While at least one anchor on television lamented the fate of Buddha, I think the arrogance of the Communists in power is responsible for the crisis. In most other states – just look at Tamil Nadu for an excellent example – antagonist political forces can align themselves to develop industry. The Indian Communist movement is marked by a disturbing streak of arrogance, and the refusal of the West Bengal government to involve the opposition from the very beginning meant that the project was going to face roadblocks.
Not that Mamta is any heroine – her primordial urge to win votes using the land bogey will boomerang, since Mamta’s vote-base is in the cities. Bengal needed investment and on the road past rajarhat in Kolkata you see some signs of progress, but if you look at Howrah from the Ghats near Vidyasagar Setu, you see an industrial wasteland, which is also the most tragic thing of taking the Rajdhani to Kolkata. Kolkata’s fate is almost as bad of the industrial towns in Northern England. The people just won’t stay, my ten year old cousin already knows he won’t live in Kolkata, my 16-year old sister is already plotting her escape. The tragedy with democracy, some say is that it gets you the politicians you deserve, sadly Bengal got idealistic thinkers and louts and not go-getters. No much people might celebrate Jyoti Basu, he was the worst thing to happen to Bengal ever, and it takes a lot to be considered worse than Mamta Banerjee.
But I really didn’t believe that the project would be derailed, and the ironic bit is in all probability the project will head over to a BJP-ruled state – Gujarat, Karnataka or Uttarakhand. I know that little factoid is incidental, but then again…

I was there!

You've seen the pictures of the car, but I'll be posting some images of the madness that ensued before and after the launch. It is a miracle I managed to shove my way inside while fists and abuses were thrown at the entrance into the press conference and while going in a Vaishnavi (Tata's PR company) rep managed to tell me that there were some 1100 journalists inside. I have never seen so many cameras or camerapersons in my life, and if I ever thought that people whose job it is capturing images worked in wolf packs, today was the day.

About the car, it is rather cute and I will reserve judgement until I drive one, but I will admit that it is a fantastic piece of engineering. I don't know how much money Tata Motors will make on the car, but that is a question for another day. About Sunita Narain and R K Pachauri's comments on congestion and pollution, while valid stink of elitism I am afraid. People will protest against this car, but they should instead go after factories, after diesel generator sets and so much more. The problem with Indian greenies is that by protesting against the wrong things, they tend to lose goodwill. Remind me to cancel my subscription to Greenpeace. Don't go after people's aspirations guys, you lose goodwill. Tell people to consume more smartly, and tell our government to spend more wisely and not allow unfettered development, but mobility and communications are the wrong things to go after.

To quote Mr Tata on the Indian consumer...

"... he will aspire for more and as prosperity improves, that aspiration will be there for more and more people, suddenly it seems like that there is a quarter of our society that seems to grudge those people that improvement in quality of their lives based on inadequate infrastructure, based on pollution, based on congestion and you wonder if that part of society has the right to determine for the rest of society..."

By the way, really liked RNT's bit where he thanked the West Bengal government and he came this close to calling Mamata names. And also, I wonder if Apple Computer will sue Tata on the 'Nano' brand, but the Tata's are a big group so they would have gone through the legal issues.

Anyway, here are some of the promised pics and guys chill out on the pro and anti 9X talk. I have some interesting stuff on the new Triveni channel tomorrow.

The crowd at the launch, though a majority were journalists, there were also suppliers and other officials. In fact, the entire Tata group was there in strength.

The car on display, this is the standard version, no AC or radio and with a sticker price of Rs 1,00,000 which translates to Rs 1,30,000 on-road in Delhi, a 70K

The press conference hall was full of desi and non-desi journos!

Debasis Ray, Tata Motors PR chief conducts the press conference.

K's Honest Car Reviews Part 4 : Zen Estilo

When you get a free car, you learn that you should not crib, even if it is Pink! Now, while I am fairly confident about my sexuality, driving a Pink car (or using a Pink phone, for that matter) is a bit much. Pink is the new Blue, creative folks in advertising might argue (referring to Hutch, which might not remain Hutch for too much longer), but a Pink car is a bit too much even for me. Maruti countered, that it really isn’t pink, rather it’s a nice ‘Mauve’ or ‘Light Baingan’ (that’s what it is!) or as my friend Sam kindly put it, ‘Fushia’. I don’t care, any which way, it was Pink, not a glorious Baby Pink or a stunning Magenta, but still an affront to my masculinity. I think.But, that isn’t the point. The point is the new Zen Estilo. Honestly, can can dismiss the driving dynamics bit with the following words – ‘Remember the Alto 1.1?’ Because, underneath that it what this car is, the underpinnings of the Alto with Maruti’s 1063cc engine which is frugal, not terribly rev-happy, but it gets the job done, with a bit of harshness, but that could be put down to the fact that the car still hadn’t been broken in. On the whole, the old Zen was a far, far more involving car to drive.

My mother had one till she upgraded to a City, this was one of the first Zen’s off the line with the then new MPFi engines and my god, that car rocked. The new car, while not sharing the unsteadiness of the WagonR at speed, is not as much ‘fun’, but ‘fun’ is a subjective term here. The old car rocketed off the line, push it hard off the line and you could go with tyre smoke and throw it into a sharp bend , or throw it into a handbrake turn, it gave you its all and there was no better small car at that than the old Zen. I loved that little car and I was sad to see the thing go when it did. The new car, as I said, gets the job done, it can go fast if you mash the gears, maybe even contemplate 150k’s on the speedo, but it doesn’t feel like fun, like the old one did
However, the monovolume shape, which imparts the car a part-Matiz/part-Innova/part-Honda City look, doesn’t do much for me from the outside, however, the insides is where this car scores. Big time. Even though I used the top-of-the-line four lakhs or somewhere around thereabouts VXi model (without optional ABS or the driver-side airbag) and even though this seems to have borrowed liberally from the WagonR parts bin, the two-tone brown-beige interiors, with a not-so-bad silver touch to the centre console and unbelievably good plastics (for a small car!) it felt nice. Honestly, there were times I really didn’t care that half the people at the Zakir Hussain Marg red light were staring at this guy wearing a button-down shirt and tie driving a pink car!
The problem with the Estilo, even though it shares the WagonR’s platform, is that while interior space is better – luggage space included (best in class, maybe, I don’t have figures though!), the tapered shoulder of the car means that there is no way you’ll fit three grown men at the back. Three grown people is a bit of a stretch in a WagonR, but this car, like the Alto is a four-seater, even though Maruti markets it as a fiver.
This car will not compete with the Alto (which is cheaper) or the WagonR and Santro (which pretend to be family cars) but maybe puts more pressure on GM (if bad aftersales and a bleeding bottomline wasn’t bad enough) to market the Spark, because this car suddenly killed that car’s value proposition. It has also given a decent alternative, thanks to its ‘interesting’ colour choices for those of us who have alternative choices in life. And if you’re single and you don’t want a boxy tall-boy, you got this ‘monovolume’, which isn’t a family car, it isn’t a fun car, but as a city runabout and maybe on the small off-days with someone (not the whole jing-band) this felt sensible even.
Just don’t buy it in Pink if you're a guy!

K’s Honest Car Reviews Part 3 : The WagonR Duo

I haven’t written a car review on the blog in a while, so I’ll post two in rapid succession. This will help in two things – first I admit I’m a ‘hit whore’ so, writing car reviews get in a lot of hits as I discover on Google Analytics (as do references to jiggly-wiggly objects on Mallika Sherawat’s chest). Secondly, my post count has taken a tumble recently, so two quick posts on matters completely unrelated to the media should help.

I have spent a considerable amount of time in the past three months driving the boxy WagonR. I’ve never been fond of the WagonR’s dubious aesthetics, even though the new redesign has made it a wee bit more appealing. But the reason I happily drove a car I don’t like for so long was because of the sheer economics of it. This was the WagonR Duo, which ran on LPG – cooking gas to you and me by another name.
Now, everytime someone does a story on LPG you hear the sob story of how much the oil marketing companies lose subsidising it. Nobody writes about how restaurant owners have milked the government by taking huge numbers of multiple connections, but that isn’t the point. Even without the subsidy and actually with a slight profit margin, LPG costs Rs 25.44 a litre in Delhi. Even with the new petrol price hovering at Rs 46.50-something, that is cheap. (LPG actually cost Rs 29.16 at the pump till a month and a half ago). Anyway, you do the math, the WagonR gives a maximum of 14km to a litre of petrol. On LPG, it gave me an average of 11.5km per litre. Factor in the Rs 20 discount on the price of the fuel, and you’ll work out just how cheap it is. The LPG fitted WagonR costs Rs 24,000 more – so if you drive 18,000km a year, you’ll be breaking even in around the same time.
The downside to this economy? Maruti has detuned the engine by around 10 per cent making the car feel very sluggish at times lower down the revs and you find yourself mashing about the gears a lot more than you expected to – so instead of notching back to third, you end up on second, and if you hit a flyover not carrying enough momentum, you’ll have to go back to first. But then again, inside a city you rarely get a chance to open up, when you do, the car does take some time to deliver the power – so there is no surge, but it can go fast if you really want it to.
So the car is cheaper to run and because this is a factory-fit it might cost more but you do not void warranties, the chances of blowing up on the DND are much less – many of the cars going up in smoke – all of them Maruti vehicles coincidentally were running on do-it-yourself CNG kits.
The only problem is that the car has next to no luggage space. Because the LPG tank sits in the space meant for the spare wheel, the spare wheel has gone above the floor and that means half the already meager luggage space vanishes. And the car continues to look just as ugly. So, buying this as the primary vehicle is not a terribly good idea – because fitting a roof rack to the vehicle is not the smartest thing to do since centre of gravity moves even higher. This is a great vehicle as a daily commuter car – but read on because it does have one major failing and that isn’t the fact that it looks butt ugly. That said, the interiors, though dull, aren’t bad – I liked the new look to the speedo, and the inbuilt system though a bit too dhin-chak for my liking, go the job done sufficiently well.
The other major problem is LPG pumps – even though I read a story in BS I think it was that the government might allow the private companies to sell LPG at the pump – because it is not subsidised and they actually make money on it – it is available at very few IOCL pumps across Delhi (and almost none outside the metros) and the small tank that Maruti have fitted has meant range on a full tank of LPG is around 180-200km. Though you can switch over to running on petrol at the flick of a switch, meaning total range is an impressive 700km, that isn’t the point really, but even the 5km detour I had to make at least twice a week to fill gas still makes sense when you look at the price of fuel. Therefore, the WagonR Duo makes sense only in large metropolitan areas where there are LPG pumps – however if you live near an LPG pump, or one is on the path of your daily commute this cars makes immense sense. The LPG kit only gets fitted in the LX and LXi versions, so the pic is a bit misleading.
End of the day, this isn’t a racer, it isn’t pretty (even the inclusion of pretty girls in the advertising can't help it), and because luggage space goes for a toss, practicality does too. But it is cheap to run, and that is what matters - inside the city and that is it. I really liked the car by the end of it, but since it was replaced by the new Zen Estilo, I didn't mind. I'll write about that in a few days.

Civic sense!

You can argue that in India today, the most attractive car available in India right now (without going through the duress of importing it) is the Mercedes CLS, ideally a CLS 55 AMG (Isaw one at Phoenix Mills a while ago). And of course, the Murcielago is also avaialble in India. But lets be practical, I can't and I doubt I ever will be able to afford those two cars, or even I could, by the time I've scammed my way to so much money, I would not have the time to enjoy them. Therefore, the most sensible and technologically most advanced car for a 'nice price' is.. the Honda Civic.
I spent quite a lot of time inside one just falling in love with its blue glow and the digital speedo. For someone who has grown up on a steady diet of car racing video games - notably the Need For Speed series and doesn't have an European sneer towards Japanese cars, the new Civic with its Katana inspired headlights and its cabin is the first car built for the Playstation generation. And it costs a bit over ten lakhs, too much for me just now, but hopefully in a few years time, I know what I want!
This post was also an excuse for me to show some brilliant adverts from Honda which we never see India. Honda does some of the best creative work of any of the car companies.
Impossible Dream

The advert for the Civic in the UK

And there was 'that ad' for the old Civic

Brilliant no!

Zooooooom.....

One of the first tricks I learnt when driving was how to get a lot of tyre squeal from a standing start - simply put it involves clutching, slotting the car into first, pressing the accelerator all the way down and then dropping the clutch. Do it well, your car takes off from the line in a haze of burnt rubber. Do it badly, or if you get a car with a really bad clutch/gearbox combo, you stall! Of course, if you do it well, you just rev through the gear, trying to push the car all the way. Which isn't very far in a 800cc Alto. But, this weekend Double Daddy got himself the new Honda Civic for a tester. Sure, it was a automatic and I couldn't do the usual stunt, but one of the pleasures of Delhi are the roads - and thus the speeds you can hit. The new Civic is the first car built for the generation that has grown up on the PS and PS2 - Damn, I loved the digital speedo, and not just that, the car is absolutely wonderful by Indian standards.
Anyway, raving about the new Civic wasn't the point of this post.
There are times in your life when life drops the clutch and races through the gears and you're holding on to the steering wheel for dear life hoping that a blind turn doesn't come up on you too quickly and you lose control and crash. Thats what life feel like for me right now - professionally, personally and socially. Life unlike a car, doesn't have seatbelts, airbags or ABS so if you wipe out, you wipe out. I know a automotive anlogy is a slightly weird one, but I've been writing about cars for some time, so you'll have to excuse that. But, maybe this does feel a tad too Metaphysical.
Dump that!
Now I gotta get back to the race, and god I wish I'm like Fernando Alonso holding on!