BMW M3: Not easy to spot this one!

While having a coffee at the Ambience mall with my family and some friends, I decided to get out for a quick sigarette, and I found this, parked along the mall’s wall.

It’s a brand new BMW M3, in a beautiful white! This is the first time I see this car in the Delhi’s area, while I had caught some Porsche, Ferrari and Lambos (Taj Mahal Hotel).

But what happened when I took this pic is more interesting, I believe. While I was shooting, a man materialized from nowhere and, from a distance, he started: “Sir…. sir! No… no…. this is <something in Hindi>… BMW…. <something else in Hindi>!”

And I: “Who are you? What do you want? This is a production car parked in a public place! It’s not a prototype, I am not stealing any secrets here! And, btw, this is my mobile phone and I am just taking a picture of a nice car!”.

And he: “Ok Sir”.

This is India: people take initiative, and they don’t know what they are talking about, but still they want to put pressure for no reason, for the sake of doing something. And you, of course, must always explain yourself!

The Nano’s big booooooo(m)!

TATA has just announced that the Nano’s forecasts in terms of production have been reviewed. “Due to the economic crisis and to the problems we faced in Sindur, which forced us to relocate the entire production chain”, they say.

These might sound as good reasons I must admit, but I am sure this is not the end of the story.

Planning the launch of such a revolutionary car (but is it really?) across the planet in one shot, looked like a very ambitious objective to me, when this thing got started. Too ambitious!

And given the fact nobody today has got cash to spend into very risky operations, the TATA’s Gota could have decided to reduce the scope, and keep the effort on some specific areas of the internal market.

And the internal (Indian) market is suffering. Yes, this is a growing economy indeed, but in the past quarter car sales have dropped of a good 18% and the decline isn’t over.

This is the reason why they are planning to make 80.000 Nanos across 2009 and 2010, instead of those 500.000 they had factored initially. Hey, wait a moment… this is just a 84% reduction of the scope!!

The car that had to make the big boom, has gone back to a nothing, or almost to a nothing. The car that had to sell like nothing before, will sell like me selling sand in the desert in a very dry day!

This does change my view. What economic crisis, what problems in Sindur? I don’t want to be too sarcastic, or even offensive, but this isn’t the first time I see an Indian company making big marketing fireworks and then delivering one tenth of them.

Get a TATA Nano description from Wikipedia here.

The National Highway 8

I haven’t seen many highways in India so far, which means I haven’t driven them, but the NH8 is my daily feed of stress. I am using a small piece of it everyday while commuting, and then the same highway will take me from Gurgaon to Delhi and back during weekends or to the Indira Gandhi Airport.

Landing plane as seen from the NH8

This road connects Delhi to Mumbai, but I have never attempted such a trip by car. What I did once was driving to Jaipur.

The NH8, from Delhi to Gurgaon is a decent road, 4 lanes and sufficient illumination. Exits and Entries are done properly and traffic is acceptable, in most cases.

After Gurgaon, it turns into a 2 lanes, very crowded and dangerous road. Tarmac is not good and full of cracks and holes, you have to go through villages and towns continuously. People will drive wrong way, you will get any kind of cars pulled by animals, three wheelers, motorbikes, overloaded trucks and buses, people crossing the highway suddenly and so on. The entire trip, from Gurgaon to Jaipur takes 4 hours, for approx 225 Kms, and it takes 10 years of your life away with it (one way!). There is only one “safe” stop along the way, which is placed exactly midway. There you can get some food and some refreshment.

Going back to the NH8, even between Delhi and Gurgaon, it can be quite dangerous and stressful. Buses will do their stops on the left lane, in all cases without making you aware in advance. Truck drivers will also stop to rest/eat/do their needs on the left lane.

When those plants splitting the highway in between will require maintenance or just some water, the gardeners will stop their cars/tracks/vans on the right lane (!), without any signal. The average speed is 80 Km/h, because even Indians do realize it would be difficult handling the car in that mess at a higher speed, especially because their driving skills are not exactly state of the art (we will talk about this in another article).

The conclusion is that the less risky lanes are the two in between. Even being this a 4 lanes highway, there is no emergency lane and, until a few days ago, I was wondering why. Then one of my Indian colleagues came to my aid, by asking me how could you possibly prevent Indian drivers from using the emergency lane as a fifth lane?

Very true I must say. By knowing the locals’ driving style, they would just use that lane as the others, making it completely useless for the main purpose! Result? Every time an accident happens (often), you get completely stuck, and so do the emergency services, such as police and ambulance.

But, the major issue is the toll gate, the one located near the Ambience Mall (they say it’s the largest mall in India, it does deserve a visit because it’s a great place!).

Basically they have two payment systems: TAG and CASH. Cash doesn’t require any explanations, while the tag is a kind of Telepass, a little device which talks to the gate and does process your payment while you transit under it, with the only and significant difference that TAG is only pre-paid, you can only recharge it at the toll gate, and the amount will expire at the end of each month, even when not spent. This makes the tag not an option for many people. Result? 90% of drivers will pay cash.

One little note: why only pre-paid? India is a country where if people can avoid paying, well… they will! Would you ever implement any post-paid services? I would not.

However, by knowing the Indian’s average speed in executing a job, you can easily conclude that each payment will take an average of 2 to 5 minutes. Yes! The driver will need to look for notes and coins into his pocket and into any possible holes in his car, hand the money to the man in the cabin, who will need to count it, at least a couple of times, negotiate for the exact amount (Indian will try to give less), ask for some spare coins, then digit the something on the cash machine, print the receipt out, hand it to the driver, who will check it and put it somewhere. Only then, the next car will be able to move in for the payment. If you have just ten cars before you, you still wait for 20 minutes, best case.

Result? There is a bloody jam there, every time, night and day!

Jam at the NH8 toll gate near Ambience Mall

If the entire trip from Gurgaon to Delhi takes 40 minutes, 15/20 minutes will be lost at the gate.

Happy driving on the NH8 then!

Please Welcom FIAT Linea to India

Introducing brand new model FIAT Linea to the Indian market.

I must admit it looks good; in fact it’s nothing else than a Grande Punto with a nice and well shaped boot attached to the back.

Two choices of engines:

• 1.3 ltr Turbo Diesel, 86/4000 PS/RPM and 203/2500 NM/RPM
• 1.4 ltr Petrol, 90/6000 PS/RPM and 115/4500 NM/RPM

They both come with a good list of equipments included in the price and they are sold into three configurations: Active, Dynamic and Emotion, with Active being the basic model, and Emotion the top of the cream.

The interiors are very FIAT, one could say. Seats, door panels and dashboard are quite standard and share a decent feeling of quality and solidity.

Only available in 4 colors at the moment: Flamenco Red, Minimal Gray, Perla Champagne and Hip Hop Black. Not a lot of fantasy into those names.

Comfort on the Emotion setup makes good promises:

• Automatic Climate Control
• Tilt Steering
• Cabin lamp with switch off timer
• Front armrest with glove box and three levels adjustment
• Rear AC vents at the foot and knee level
• Rear armrest with a glove box and cup holder
• Collapsible rear sun protection curtain
• Anti intrusion boot inges
• Massive boot space of 500 litres
• Adjustable front seat armrest

From a safety point of view, the Linea comes equipped with a good deal of devices:

• Dual Front Airbags
• ABS with EBD (this is an electronic system which splits the breaking power where it’s more needed)
• FPS (Fire Prevention System)
• Anti-theft engine immobilizer with rolling code
• 3 safety headrests
• Double Crank prevention system
• Programmable Speed limit indicator
• Programmable Follow Me Home headlights
• Digital door open indicator with exact open door indication.

Here is the equipment list, per model:

Prices now. These will change from city to city, in this Blog we’ll always take New Delhi as reference:

Petrol 1.4 ltr engine

Turbo Diesel 1.3 ltr engine

I believe the FIAT Linea is a good value for these prices, one thing is very important, and this will be valid for whatever car we will talk about in this Blog: availability of Service Points. FIAT is improving a lot on this, you might be willing to check FIAT India Web Page to locate the closest garage to you (see link at the top of this article).

Good Luck Linea!

Let’s kick this thing off!

Hello, and welcome to India in Motion.

This is a brand new blog, written by an Italian (me), who works and lives in New Delhi. Since I have a true passion for cars, for driving, and for automotive in general, I decided to start this diary, with the objective of giving you some snapshots of how India is going throughout its “motoring” changes.

I will tell you about the cars sold in India, about roads and trasportation, and facts and opinions, I will try to make photos and videos and share them with you guys.

So, let’s get started with some general information about this India in Motion.

The Sub Continent is going through a massive acquisition of transportation means, most of them will belong to individuals and companies. Figures are growing exponentially and every day you have more cars on the roads.

Unfortunately, those roads are not improving accordingly at all, and going from point A to point B can be a nightmare. Streets are quite often broken, full of holes and any kind of traps. Further to this, you will have in most cases animals everywhere, poor illumination, poor signals and traffic lights and, in general, a very large amount of dangerous things.

The Indian driving style is, so to speak, very customized. This is due to ignorance: people here do not learn how to drive, they never give way, they do not use turn indicators, they will drive the wrong way for no reason (and maybe with lights off at night), they will perform wild parking. Driving in this country requires specific skills that you won’t learn anywhere on the Planet.

Most people who can afford it, will have a driver, and so do I. My man is sufficiently skilled, with time I explained him how to use turn indicators and lights, to avoid blowing the horn every second and to try not to go wrong way, unless it’s absolutely required by the road and traffic conditions.

Said all this, which I will describe much more into details with time, there is quite a large amount of available brands, most of them not exciting at all, with some due exceptions. Prices must stay competitive, given the average income, therefore quality is what it is.

The top Indian manufacturer are, of course, TATA and Mahindra & Mahindra. The rest is very Japanise, with Toyota and Honda leading the way. The top German cars are always available, but they fall into a completely different price range. FIAT is here too, they work closely with Tata.

Choosing your car in India is not easy, it really depends on your specific needs, on your family configuration, on your badget, on service points availability in your area, etc… Finding the best price will be a long search, each and every dealer will do something different and, overall, they will all try to cheat you, especially if you are white and you do not have a yellow point in the middle of your head!

In a nutshell, all this will possibly keep me (and hopefully you) busy for the next months.

Good Luck “India in Motion”!