Japs are Japs .In and Indians are Indians sort of way .
An early morning drive from New Jersey to JFK airport showed me the brilliance of the Honda civic . The tar road coupled with its intricate engineering helps the car glide steadily at 100 miles an hour .
The precision that the Japs apply on making automobile engines has created huge demands and helped economic revolutions across the world for ages .
Koreans on the other hand like to make low cost cars and these cars remain that way – low cost . The constant re-pricing of their cars at lower than their inaugural price reflects poor quality handiwork and reliability . The Optra with a Korean Daewoo Nebura engine began selling at a ten and half lacs and now retails at six . The Korean Hyundai Accent drops thrity percent of its value in ten minutes of driving out of the showroom . The Daewoo Matiz vanished . Mid-Day once carried a photograph of a Hyundai Cielo that caught fire on the road suddenly . Noone drives a Korean Hyosang bike although the model made it to India five years back .The fourth Chief Executive officer of Hyundai has just committed suicide as Korean authorities caught up with him for financial irregularities.
Ten years back , I had my first set of wheels , a company hand-me-down fiat . Hierarchy demanded that I get the fiat and I got it . It seemed a pretty long car for Pune’s roads then . Maneouvrability was quite an effort . But , it was fun . The change to a car from a bike meant new things , some strange , some unwelcome . There was a sense of loss of freedom though . The freedom to zip around without objectives . One can’t do that in a car . There’s no feeling the rain on one’s face , no feeling the wind around your ears . No glares when you zip past other bikes . No woman gripping you tight in order to avoid a flight off the bike . No circuitous traffic snarls . No speed limits. A sense of freedom that a car can never give .
Driving a car migrates you to a different class , one that lacks feeling , one that has enough , one who’s ambitions are insatiable , one who pauses and thinks before one acts , one who is not actually free .
Bike is also cult . Car is not .
Except probably the Mercedes Benz .
I test drove one of the first E230’s that were being launched in India , on the internal roads of Tata Motors factory in Chinchwad , Pune.
It is a cherished memory .
I described the drive to my excited collegues back in office .
“If God is here ‘, I said gesticulating in the air with my right palm held flat at my eye level , “ The Merc is here “, I concluded placing my left palm just under my right .
“The Merc is next to God.”
“ At 230 kilometers per hour , the car is the next best experience to experiencing God. After 140 kmph , the chasis of the car drops down a couple of inches for better grip . You feel a sudden lowering , the kind that hits you when an aircraft starts to descend . Ans at 160 kmph , if you take a turn , the car drops its speed intelligently to 40 kmph. As you start the car and take off , it hits 100 kmph in 4 seconds ”
“Man , the Merc is something ”
Everyone gaped at me , wondering what the whole experience was and what they were expected to do about it .
‘Rest of the cars will die aspiring ‘, I said in conclusion .
As one turns off the expressway into Pune , there is a deluge of buzzing bikes all over the road . Everyone and his uncle has a bike . The bicepted beefcaked guys drive the high powered getaway bikes while the giggly girls drive a small 50cc make-your-own-way moped. The young girls generally have a colourful bandana garment covering their faces and head , leaving just the eyes open to navigate . It helps them stay away from the pollution , but stay close to their boyfriends incognito . Perhaps it was invented by the local maharastrian girls who didn’t want to be noticed by their parents while biking around with a bunch of their college boy friends . Mumbai offers tremendous anonymity with its great geography and zillions of places to hide , Pune doesn’t , so this is therefore a remarkable invention.
Pune’s roads are thickly populated with students on their 125cc bikes , unlike Chennai which has 50cc or 100cc bikes ridden by thousands of working men and women . Ahmedabad has lots of scooters and lots of brash women drivers .Their three wheelers used to run on kerosene , considered the poor man’s petrol . There is no traffic and civic sense in Ahmedabad , Pune is a shade better . In Mangalore , they buy a car when they go to study , so most students arrive in the coastal town with a car and a house in tow . So , there’s this student who is going to be spending the next 6 years doing his medicine which costs him a good 20 lacs , so for a ten percent extra cash , one buys a car too . Handy for college . Handy for style .Handy for dates .
Again unlike the scooters of the traders in Ahmedabad and the working men in Chennai or the car-ed students of Mangalore , the bikes of Pune belong to students .
That’s why Pune as a city is much younger than Chennai or Mangalore or Ahmedabad or even Bangalore .
‘Pune , powered by 125cc ‘, could make a nice advertising line .
It’s density of bikes is probably one of the highest ,making the city buzzing and youthful .
Pune will never grow up .
Be 125cc forever .
An early morning drive from New Jersey to JFK airport showed me the brilliance of the Honda civic . The tar road coupled with its intricate engineering helps the car glide steadily at 100 miles an hour .
The precision that the Japs apply on making automobile engines has created huge demands and helped economic revolutions across the world for ages .
Koreans on the other hand like to make low cost cars and these cars remain that way – low cost . The constant re-pricing of their cars at lower than their inaugural price reflects poor quality handiwork and reliability . The Optra with a Korean Daewoo Nebura engine began selling at a ten and half lacs and now retails at six . The Korean Hyundai Accent drops thrity percent of its value in ten minutes of driving out of the showroom . The Daewoo Matiz vanished . Mid-Day once carried a photograph of a Hyundai Cielo that caught fire on the road suddenly . Noone drives a Korean Hyosang bike although the model made it to India five years back .The fourth Chief Executive officer of Hyundai has just committed suicide as Korean authorities caught up with him for financial irregularities.
Ten years back , I had my first set of wheels , a company hand-me-down fiat . Hierarchy demanded that I get the fiat and I got it . It seemed a pretty long car for Pune’s roads then . Maneouvrability was quite an effort . But , it was fun . The change to a car from a bike meant new things , some strange , some unwelcome . There was a sense of loss of freedom though . The freedom to zip around without objectives . One can’t do that in a car . There’s no feeling the rain on one’s face , no feeling the wind around your ears . No glares when you zip past other bikes . No woman gripping you tight in order to avoid a flight off the bike . No circuitous traffic snarls . No speed limits. A sense of freedom that a car can never give .
Driving a car migrates you to a different class , one that lacks feeling , one that has enough , one who’s ambitions are insatiable , one who pauses and thinks before one acts , one who is not actually free .
Bike is also cult . Car is not .
Except probably the Mercedes Benz .
I test drove one of the first E230’s that were being launched in India , on the internal roads of Tata Motors factory in Chinchwad , Pune.
It is a cherished memory .
I described the drive to my excited collegues back in office .
“If God is here ‘, I said gesticulating in the air with my right palm held flat at my eye level , “ The Merc is here “, I concluded placing my left palm just under my right .
“The Merc is next to God.”
“ At 230 kilometers per hour , the car is the next best experience to experiencing God. After 140 kmph , the chasis of the car drops down a couple of inches for better grip . You feel a sudden lowering , the kind that hits you when an aircraft starts to descend . Ans at 160 kmph , if you take a turn , the car drops its speed intelligently to 40 kmph. As you start the car and take off , it hits 100 kmph in 4 seconds ”
“Man , the Merc is something ”
Everyone gaped at me , wondering what the whole experience was and what they were expected to do about it .
‘Rest of the cars will die aspiring ‘, I said in conclusion .
As one turns off the expressway into Pune , there is a deluge of buzzing bikes all over the road . Everyone and his uncle has a bike . The bicepted beefcaked guys drive the high powered getaway bikes while the giggly girls drive a small 50cc make-your-own-way moped. The young girls generally have a colourful bandana garment covering their faces and head , leaving just the eyes open to navigate . It helps them stay away from the pollution , but stay close to their boyfriends incognito . Perhaps it was invented by the local maharastrian girls who didn’t want to be noticed by their parents while biking around with a bunch of their college boy friends . Mumbai offers tremendous anonymity with its great geography and zillions of places to hide , Pune doesn’t , so this is therefore a remarkable invention.
Pune’s roads are thickly populated with students on their 125cc bikes , unlike Chennai which has 50cc or 100cc bikes ridden by thousands of working men and women . Ahmedabad has lots of scooters and lots of brash women drivers .Their three wheelers used to run on kerosene , considered the poor man’s petrol . There is no traffic and civic sense in Ahmedabad , Pune is a shade better . In Mangalore , they buy a car when they go to study , so most students arrive in the coastal town with a car and a house in tow . So , there’s this student who is going to be spending the next 6 years doing his medicine which costs him a good 20 lacs , so for a ten percent extra cash , one buys a car too . Handy for college . Handy for style .Handy for dates .
Again unlike the scooters of the traders in Ahmedabad and the working men in Chennai or the car-ed students of Mangalore , the bikes of Pune belong to students .
That’s why Pune as a city is much younger than Chennai or Mangalore or Ahmedabad or even Bangalore .
‘Pune , powered by 125cc ‘, could make a nice advertising line .
It’s density of bikes is probably one of the highest ,making the city buzzing and youthful .
Pune will never grow up .
Be 125cc forever .
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