Diet Car

I’m sure you have watched the new Maruti Suzuki ads on television these days. It is an example of brilliant positioning conveying the value exactly to the point. Kudos to the advertisers.

That aside, I wanted to actually verify if the Maruti cars correctly answer the ‘Kitna deti hai?’ question. My family has been using Maruti Suzuki cars since ages. But we never truly measured the eating potential of any of our cars. So this time, I decided to take my 2 and half year old Wagon R to the task, not for the car, but for the credibility of the ad.

I let the car run to a near dry condition, till it was only good enough to go to the nearest petrol pump. There I purchased Rs. 500 worth of fuel. In Thane, you get exactly 8.67 litres of regular petrol in that much money. Assuming it already had some fuel left, we can conveniently say that the car had about 9.5 litres of petrol in it. I also took 2 litres of petrol as spare. Then I drove the car (in the city and on the highway) till the tank went dry. The figures that the car returned with actually amazed even my mechanic.

The car ran for a whooping 177.1 kilometres in 9.5 litres of petrol! That is a mileage of 18.64 km per litre in a city like Mumbai. My question was confidently answered by my beloved ‘Laal gaadi’ 🙂

Kitna deti hai? … Boss, bahut deti hai!. Thank you Maruti Suzuki!

PS: Picture for representational purpose only.

Worried about bombs and my car

The recent bombings in Ahmedabad and attempts to bomb the city of Surat have left me a bit worried. Two of the live bombs found in Surat were car bombs, planted in two Wagon R cars stolen from Mumbai. Since I live in Mumbai and I own a Wagon R too, I thought why was my car being targeted?  I gave a long thought, about 10 sec and made up my mind. I’m not in Danger.

Why? Actually both the cars stolen were a Wagon R duo model. Meaning both cars had an LPG gas kit installed inside them. If the bombs would have exploded, it would amplify the effect. Since I own a petrol version, I’m safe

In either cases, it is utterly shameful act, on terrorists to do such things and on Police for allowing them to do so.

At 140 KMPH on the express highway.

Cloudy skies, pleasant temperature, wind gushing from both sides, the road dividers hardly visible, exhilarating experience and the only sound you hear is that of the tyres. How do you feel when you are driving a near perfectly engineered small car, the Suzuki Wagon R on the 8 lane express highway at 140 KMPH?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Whoooooooooooo Hooooooooooooooo!

This is how you feel. It was a mind boggling experience to drive the car on the express highway. I was on my way to the first ever CE meet, on my first ever journey to Pune in my own car on the express highway. Gosh, so many mile stones. And I didn’t keep any of them unturned. En route Pune, we had a brief stop over in Panvel at my friend’s place. Panvel to Pune is roughly 124 kilometers. about 20 kms out of it is through the tunnels and around the hills. Despite that we covered the distance in about 73 minutes. That is at an average speed of about 102kmph! Whoa, I was surprised by the stability and the driving comfort given to me by the wagon R. Incredible. No other car in this segment would have given me the confidence to drive at that speed.

Through out the journey, only 8 cars could manage to go ahead. Two Toyota Corolla, One Chevrolet Forrester (SUV), Two Mercedes (One brand new Kompressor E250 and one old SL300), One Prado Land Cruiser, One Honda Civic and one BMW 325i (my favorite car). Well, what do I say, I’m impressed by my car. Of course you can’t compete with the Mercs and the Prados and the BMWs with a car who has an engine of 1.1 liters.

I’ll post a picture soon. More updates about my journey and about the CE meet coming up.

My new car

We recently booked a vehicle, a Suzuki Wagon R. I had been thinking about this vehicle for a long time now. Finally with my marriage, I got a chance to get it. (Psst, I’ll tell you, getting married is not all that costly affair. All the cash I received in my wedding has significantly contributed to my heavy expenses, Wagon R being one of the.) So there it is, I landed in Mumbai from Shimla, en route Delhi on 3^rd. The first thing that my wife asked was a car, and my condition was like… WHAAATTTTTTTT! Chill, I’m a rich guy. 😉 So we walked in to this showroom nearby our house, got the deal finalized, worked out the down payment and decided to book it… then and there.

Well it started off with us trying to know how much are the banks gonna suck out of us. And we decided that the showroom was providing the best rate to us and we will go with it. But then the people who have absolutely nothing to do with you and your wishes are the ones who fancy giving advices the most. It almost led to a big fight with my wife. Thankfully a cool headed guy that I am, I decided to overturn. Most of these guys argued that the interest rates we were paying were phenomenally high. However the idiots didn’t know that for a poor guy like me, who can pay the lowest possible down payment actually couldn’t afford any thing else. When you say that the interest is cyclic, it means lesser the loan amount, lesser will be the rate of interest. It took lot of patience for me to make my wife understand that. Anyway, it wasn’t over there. The banks are after all banks. Even if there is a cut throat competition, they will still take there leisurely time to process your application. The best part was, we applied for a loan in a public bank. Wallah!

I don’t understand, what difference does it make if you submit a telephone bill instead of an electric bill for an address proof? And who uses a ration card these days? Interestingly, the one I had seen in my home (parents) was a hand written card with names of family members written at the back page. Any guy could easily add one or two of them in the same card. It is very surprising and stupid. Never mind. The condition right now it, I’m still waiting for my car to come. The loan took almost 2 weeks to get through, and not the showroom and RTO combine are eating my remaining time.

Never knew buying a car would be such a time wasting exercise.