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February 2012 Volume 14 Issue 6 ` 125

Expo Stars SUVs and MPVs rule the roost

XA Alpha

Duster EcoSport

Lots of affordable superbikes coming Evalia MPV Ertiga CBR 150R

NEW SWIFT DZIRE All-new sedan to get automatic too!

Bonneville Monster 795

EXPO STARS DRIVEN

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KTM DUKE 690 RIDE

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Hyundai Sonata ■ New VW Beetle ■ Mini Cooper ■ Honda Fireblade

SUZUKI INTRUDER M800 TESTED

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TOYOTA GT-86 DRIVE

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COLLECTOR’S SPECIAL EDITION

February 2012 Volume 14 Issue 6 ` 125

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motoringnews L o g o n t o w w w. ov e r d r i v e . i n / n e w s/

New Mondeo set for India in 2013 New One Ford global Mondeo to debut in Paris, India inning starts next year

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• India launch late-2013 • Bigger, more spacious • Takes on Camry & Accord • CBU import from Germany likely

he car in the pic is the new Ford Fusion which the Blue Oval showed at the 2012 Detroit Show. This car is identical to the new Mondeo, with the company intending to share as much as 80 per cent of the Fusion with the Mondeo.

The merger of the two names is part of the One Ford global vehicle programme.

This very car is part of Ford’s launch plans for India, we expect the car to go on sale here towards the end of 2013 wearing the familiar Mondeo name. Ford will show the Mondeo later this year at the Paris show

and in Europe, as per tradition, there will also be a hatchback version featuring styling from the four-door sedan and an estate version will also join the Mondeo line-up.

The response at Detroit suggests that Ford have a winner on their hands. The styling is adventurous with cues from ex-Ford brands Jaguar and Aston Martin with just a hint of the new four-door coupe set, like Audi’s swanky A7, thrown in – and the heavy influence of the Evos concept is unmistakable. The result is a bigger car (13mm longer, 26mm higher than the current Mondeo), with plenty of rear seat FEB 2012 overdrive

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N ew Sw i f t Dz ir e

Bootylicious A shapely behind, better handling and a better price makes the new Dzire an attractive option Words Alan D’Cruz Photography Gaurav S Thombre

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eeing the new Swift Dzire for the first time is like meeting that frumpy girl from high school who no one would date. But a few nips and tucks later she’s the centre of all the attention. The old Dzire was quite unconcerned with its outward appearance and had a boot that didn’t do anything to hide what it was - a useful afterthought. The extra hours spent working on designing the hind quarters is what makes the transition from plain Jane to bootylicious boot on the new Dzire. Woah… Opposite lock, off the throttle and then back on it again and I’m out of trouble.

Phew! Thinking about rear ends while hurtling into turn one of the Buddh International Circuit is not a good idea. I don’t want to slide off into the gravel trap and put an end to the first of my three hot laps in the 87PS petrol version of the Dzire that Maruti has so graciously allowed us to thrash at the track, but I’ll come back to that later.

The new Dzire while not being the best looking car on the block certainly shines in comparison to the old car. 32 design engineers have spent hours on the drawing table to seamlessly integrate the boot onto the new Swift platform. The new boot is shorter and though it does make the car look stubby, it doesn’t diminish the sporty image of its Swift heritage. To make the boot smaller, Maruti have changed the angle of the roof after the C pillar, it now slopes down at a more acute angle and the boot lid too is made shorter. Space has reduced considerably to 316 litres (The old Dzire boasted 440 litres), the smallest boot in its class.

But this is still larger than the hatch, for instance, the Swift has just 204 litres. The boot is also flanked with a new set of tail lamps that don’t wrap around as much as in the Swift complementing the leaner look while a chrome accent runs solidly between the two adding a touch of luxury. At the front the honeycomb grille has been changed to a twin horizontal slat design with vertical strips running across the length. The air dam is now more angular and sports a wider smile.

Maruti claim that they have changed the car, A-pillar rearwards but these are mostly internal changes to increase space for the rear passengers. The new, compact look means that the Dzire is just 145mm longer (that’s less than the length of your erm… average pencil) than the Swift and 25mm taller. The increased height slightly compensates for the lack of head room in the rear seat area created by the roof sloping down towards the boot.

Like they did with the Alto, Maruti have once again, scooped out the back of the front seats, releasing welcome extra knee room for rear passengers without changing seat mounting points. To further enhance the sense of space, the seat squab is set at a

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Min i Coop e r and Coop e r S

Sooper Cooper We drive the iconic Mini Cooper at its home ground in Oxford Words Halley Prabhakar

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ir Alec Issigonis set new standards in automotive design and engineering to produce a masterpiece fifty years ago in reply to the European fuel crisis of the late 50s. He could not have dreamed of the impact his little car would have on the world of culture, people and of course automobiles. We are referring to the Mini, a car for everyone, from a celebrity to an everyday person. It was widely accepted as the most important car of the 20th century. The car went on to become an icon and lasted four decades virtually in original form. It shone in motorsport too, claiming three victories in the legendary Monte Carlo Rally. But that’s the past; the turn of the century saw the arrival of the all-new Mini manufactured by its new owner, BMW. It turned out to be just as much fun to drive and sold a million units in a record six years just like its predecessor. The new Mini is in its second generation now and after a really long wait, the car is finally here in India. I was lucky to sample this pint sized legend in Oxford - the birthplace of Mini.

Look at the Mini and the first thing you notice is its size, it isn’t exactly mini but similar in size to a larger hatchback such as the Swift. The design though has evolved from the original Mini and has a very simplistic approach. From the front, the big round headlamps merging with the bonnet give the car a retro feel while the use of chrome surrounds around the headlamp add to the elegance. The front grille design is nostalgic and is one of many elements in the car that reminds us of the original Mini. The side profile is neat and simple, the pillars and the side windows merge well to look like one single unit while the pronounced fenders give the car a sporty appearance. The ‘bulldog’ stance is retained from the classic Mini while the car sits rather low. The front and rear wheels are placed at far ends resulting in a slightly long wheelbase but with extremely short overhangs. From the rear too, the classic Mini gene is prevalent and it reflects in the silhouette of the car. The tail lamps too have chrome surrounds while

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KTM 690 D uk e

Duke Nukem!

The KTM Duke gets bigger and badder!

Words Bertrand D’souza

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’m completely out of my depth in this environment. I’m so far out of my depth I’m wondering if I should just roll back the throttle and settle for riding the 690 Duke at my own pace. At the very least I’d be able to return home in one piece to see my family and eventually write a story. But rolling off the throttle would mean a lonely ride. I’m the only Indian and every other rider is European, a few with their roots in places as far as Brazil and Australia. It’s an exclusive moment for me being the only one from our shores riding one of KTM’s finest on the island of Gran Canaria, one of the finest places in the world to ride a bike. But the lonely bit comes up because everyone else except me is, to put it mildly, crazy fast. On roads that are narrower than the veins on my grandmother’s hands this bunch of nutty bikers is defying all sorts of logic. But amidst all that speed is an intense sense of control, the lines are tight, the wheelies accurate and the drifts

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spectacular. It’s only now that I understand why the Duke attained its bad boy image. And now with the 690 Duke the newest avatar of a cult motorcycle, KTM intends rewriting the rules of hooliganism.

The Duke first introduced in 1996 was KTM’s take on a street motorcycle after having dabbled extensively in off-road and motocross bikes. It was at the time a revolutionary motorcycle. Classified as a supermoto it brought a new level of riding to the streets with its mix of a tallish stance, fat road tyres, wide handlebars and motocross like styling and ergonomics. It was successful and spawned a whole new market space inspiring several new players to rethink their strategies. In 2000 KTM redesigned the Duke making it look a lot sharper than the original with an even sharper and more rugged look to follow in 2003 and another new Duke in 2008 with a new engine and more horsepower called the 690.

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2012 H y undai SONATA

overdrive FEB 2012

Liquid Art Previewing the Hyundai Sonata which was revealed at Auto Expo 2012.

Expected to hit showrooms in February Words Ray Hutton

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ppreciation of car brands depends on where you live.

Hyundai has been consistently successful in India but only recently garnered a good reputation in Europe and the United States. In those long-established markets Korean cars had been seen as upstarts with indifferent design, lacking in new technology, and saleable only at the lowest prices.

Hyundai never lacked ambition but it took some time to understand the standards by which Europeans and Americans judge cars. The first signs that it had got the message came when Hyundai and its companion brand Kia launched their first models designed and built in Europe. The Hyundai i30 and Kia Cee’d were a quantum leap from their previous contenders in the hotly-contested C-sector; the Cee’d even made the short list for the 2008 Car of the Year in Europe.

These better cars, plus the downturn in European and US economies that put an emphasis on value-for-money, consolidated Hyundai’s position as a major player in the FEB 2012 overdrive

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Monster on my

porch

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Ducati has always symbolised the epitome of Italian automotive engineering.

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Le xus L F-A

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Cloud 9000 Driving Lexus’ 560PS, 9000rpm luxo-supercar at Fuji Speedway Words Shubhabrata Marmar

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f dentists’ drills were silent, people wouldn’t be half as scared of them. It’s the revs I tell you. It’s why the 15,000rpm howl of the R6 is such a wonderful thing. But few cars rev anywhere even close to that. And that, in a word, was the primary reason I was excited about driving the Lexus LF-A. In my tactless sort of bumbling way, I mentioned this to Bert who promptly offered to kill me once I returned from the drive, since he really wanted to drive the Lexus himself and thought my perspective was a bit, er, decayed.

Then some time in the car gave me pause.

A chance to have a change of mind. 9000rpm sounds wild when it explodes out of a freakishly light-footed distinctly Japanese V10. The engineers considered other engine formats but rejected the V8 for being too slow to rev, while the V12 evidently suffers from an excess

of reciprocating masses. The V10 is perfection, they decided. And when it hits 9000rpm (fuel cut off is actually still higher) it’s pure engineered madness. It’s drunk out of your skull, teetering on a bridge railing singing Born To Be Wild with no clothes on madness. The engineers at Lexus who fashioned this 72 degree (for awesome primary balance) V10 need to be handed a Nobel prize for excitement or be rushed to a padded cell in straitjackets.

The designer should just be chided. Call me jaundiced or cynical but the LFA just isn’t good looking in that luridly sexy way of the supercar. Spectacular? Sure. Wearing more scoops than an ice cream shop? Naturally. Sexy? Er, no. It’s way too restrained, the body work has fewer curves than my favorite scapegoat, Kate Moss. It’s too restrained, too scoopy-venty. It is properly exotic, at least. This is a carbon-fibre tub.

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Toyota GT 86

The grin reaper Toyota finds its spark once more with its new rear-wheel drive sporty coupe. The GT86 is huge, huge, huge, huge fun to drive!

Words Shubhabrata Marmar

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’ve neither driven the Mazda MX-5 nor the Porsche Cayman. And everything I read about the two says that my kaleidoscope of driving experience is impoverished by the omissions. They would certainly have come in handy because now I’m one of the fewest journalists on the planet who’ve spent time with the new Toyota FT86. Yes, I know it’s now called the GT86 (and loads and loads of journalists have driven it), but I drove it the day before it was officially launched, and thus, it was still the FT when I drove it.

The number in the name holds great significance for Toyota. The Toyota Corolla GT Coupe AE86 from the 1980s remains an iconic car for the brand. The casual enthusiast might say Celica or Supra, but the cognoscenti and the anoraks know the legend of the AE86 is cooler - it’s got more tyre smoke and it’s a little bit more underground which makes it cooler. The 86 bit also describes the bore and stroke of the engine, and once again, Toyota traditionally deploy square engines in the vehicles they consider the sportiest. This time though, the engine is a 2.0-litre flat four that comes via the Impreza and makes 197PS. Not a great number but promising, at the very least, in a sub-1200kg car.

Subaru has promised a 300PS STI version later. This is mated to a six-speed manual or automatic and we had the latter to play with.

As you will see from the LF-A story, I wasn’t totally blown away by the Lexus, quoting the lack of laps as the primary reason for my disillusionment. With the FT86, I would have loved to have another seven hundred odd laps for sure, but three laps of a short track next to the main Fuji Speedway F1 course was enough to burn in a desire to have one in the garage.

It begins with the looks, obviously. The car, which Subaru (BR-Z) and Scion (FR-S) will also be selling under different names, looks svelte, lithe and small enough to straddle desirable and approachable. It is a delicate

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Suzuki I nt rud e r M800

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The American

dream

Suzuki introduces the Intruder M800, the smaller sibling to its only other cruiser in the India market. We head out to test it Words Abhay Verma Photography Gaurav S Thombre

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ruisers are essentially American. They are the existential product of America - its huge, wide expanses, straight roads and that sense of endless loping rather than the frantic Alpine adventures that, for instance, the Europeans are so enamoured of. And cruisers, in all their lowertech, nostalgia-coloured glory are at odds with Japanese motorcycles - plastic-clad, sharp, tilted on their noses, performance machinery. In every way, apart from, the actual lever placement for brakes, clutch and gear change, the cruiser is at odds with Japanese bikes. But such is Harley-Davidson’s hold on the American market, the world’s biggest cruiser market, that the Japanese have to take a stab at the cruiser. And they have come close on occasion, we’ll happily admit.

The Intruder, with it’s M1800R gained a fair reputation as a brutal-looking, fast moving, competent cruiser, quite at odds with H-D’s bikes but extremely likeable on its own.

But the high price of the M1800R deterred many prospective buyers and so now, Suzuki has a much more affordable option in the M800. The timing is excellent, given that we are about to see quite a few sub-10 lakh rupee motorcycle being launched this year and the next. And none of them, it would appear, are likely to be cruisers.

Styling and build quality I remember having a friend in school who had a twin brother. The two looked very similar but my friend was a whole size bigger than his brother. The M800 reminds me of them because it actually is a downsized M1800. The sloping headlight, wide handlebar, super-wide fuel tank, side panels, seat, tail light all look very similar. In fact, from a distance it would really be difficult to spot the difference. Look closer and you will note difference in the size of the engine and the

exhaust. The headlight, end cans and tail light all are downsized units – Suzuki appear to have kept the styling the same, but suited it to the smaller displacement engine.And yes, this one gets its heavy-handed share of chrome as well. In true cruiser fashion, the rear view mirrors, engine, exhaust are all chrome, which along with the black shade of our test bike looked quite smashing. It has loads of presence, and guarantees you the stares on the road. People get immediately that this is an expensive motorcycle. Its imposing presence on the roads is its USP, and if you ask me, it outperforms its core competition – the H-D SuperLow, Iron 883 and now the Street Bob and the Hyosung ST7 in this department. Build quality is good, and so are the fit and finish levels.

Engine and performance Most cruisers boast V-twins and the Intruder has a fuel-injected 805cc, 45-degree liquidcooled unit making 53PS at 6000rpm. But torque is usually more critical to cruiser performance and the M800 has 68.38Nm, coming to just 4000rpm.

Thumb the starter, and the Intruder immediately clears up the fact that it does not hail from the Yankee land. In comparison to a Harley, the Intruder sounds muted, and when you ride one back home late at night, your neighbours won’t even know that you’ve arrived. In terms of performance, 53PS does not really sound like a lot for an 800cc motorcycle, but feels adequate. The M800’s engine is not one of the smoothest and vibration creeps in through the foot pegs, which gets a bit annoying at higher engine speeds.

What gets your attention though is the Intruder’s torquey feel. There’s ample pulling power all the way through the rev range, which makes gear changes optional – in traffic or on a highway. In fact, the torque was enough to let me get the front wheel a few FEB 2012 overdrive

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VO LKSWAG E N BE E T L E

New original

It’s obviously a Beetle but subtly different in every feature and dimension Words Ray Hutton

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he New Beetle led the retrocar boom of the 1990s. The novelty of its old-car shape with modern mechanicals particularly appealed to Americans. The original Beetle was the first imported car to make an impact in the US and the simplicity and reliability of this little car with its air-cooled engine in the trunk left a good memory for many families. So did the marijuana-fuelled Summer of Love when the VW Beetle and camper-van became the official cars of hippiedom.

But it wasn’t the old timers who bought the New Beetle, built on a Golf-derived front-wheel drive platform. It was adopted most eagerly by young women and became what Americans call, somewhat disparagingly, a ‘secretary’s car’.

That was OK because the New Beetle was obviously a one-trick pony. How can you replace a retro car? Logically, and chronologically, the Beetle should be followed by a re-created Mark 1 Golf. Volkswagen thought differently and its designers were charged with the task of creating a new, New Beetle that looked different but somehow the same. And it had to have a more masculine appeal.

That was a difficult brief. We congratulate Walter de Silva’s team on a job well done. Design chief de Silva calls it a ‘new original’. The new car, launched last April simultaneously in Shanghai, New York and Berlin, is obviously a Beetle but subtly different in every feature and dimension.

Compared with its immediate predecessor, it is longer, wider and lower with a more rakish roof profile and has a longer wheelbase and squared-off wheelarches covering larger wheels.

The Beetle is now aimed more at boy racers than lady drivers. The pastel colours have gone and so has the dashboard flower

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2012 Fir e b l a d e CBR 10 0 0RR

A sharper Blade Honda has revamped its 1000cc Fireblade for 2012, just in time for the 20th anniversary celebrations of its flagship superbike.

Words harriet Ridley Photography Honda

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can’t believe it’s been 20 years since the FireBlade – the capital B was dropped in 2002 when its creator, Tadao Baba retired – revolutionised the superbike scene. Up until then the focus was on superbikes to be as powerful as possible with little thought given to weight. So although the big bikes were fast, much of that power was sapped by all that bulk and lard which made handling similar to that of a bus.

And so came the FireBlade with its relatively small 893cc engine (it has since gone up to 999cc), but super-lightweight that enabled it to make the most of the power and made handling so much better. It changed forever the way manufacturers developed their superbikes, making weight and handling as important as all-out power.

And so it seems odd that 20 years on, while the manufacturers focus on maximum power, awesome handling and state-of-theart electronics, Honda is making its Fireblade heavier without increasing power.

The 2012 model is actually heavier than this year’s bike by a kilo (200kg), while with the C-ABS – the Combined-Anti lock braking system introduced in 2009 – is a whole

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12kg heavier at 211kg. In fact there’s no increase in power and torque from the same 999.8cc inline-four engine either – these remain at 178PS and 112Nm – and neither does it get the race-derived traction control technology that all the other superbikes are acquiring. This is because while all other manufacturers are focusing on turning their production bikes into uncompromising track machines, Honda has been focusing for the past few years on making its Fireblade the perfect sportsbike for the road.

Project leader of the CBR1000RR Fireblade, Hirofumi Fukunaga explains: “Fireblade customers in Europe consist of 15 per cent professional racer, 10 per cent road and track user, and 75 per cent pure road rider – so Honda strives to make the Fireblade the most usable.”

Not only that, but they’ve by-passed the general rule of updating a flagship superbike once every two years – the last time the Fireblade got a revamp was 2008. This it says is based on economic climate and customer feedback, meaning they’re helping their customers by giving models greater shelf life, which also means they retain stronger second-hand values.

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au to e x p o 2012

motors h ow

It’s show time The 2012 Auto Expo brought a wealth of new cars, motorcycles and trucks that are coming to India shortly. Here’s every significant automobile from the sprawling Delhi motor show Words Team OVERDRIVE Photography Gaurav S Thombre, Ashok George

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F e at u r e

H OR NBI L L RAL LY

Horn, yes please

Rishaad goes to Nagaland to cover the Hornbill rally but discovers so much more Words Rishaad Mody Photography Rishaad Mody, JK Tyre

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t’s the strangest thing. Try as you might you won’t spot any birds in the sky all across Nagaland. At first I thought it was the climate. If it wasn’t the cold perhaps the altitude that was too much for them to handle. Boy was I wrong. As it turns out, Nagaland has no birds because the locals have eaten them all. It’s a similar case with dogs, and squirrels and hamsters and frogs and grasshoppers and…

Now you couldn’t be faulted for assuming that I was in some extreme tribal place that had missed a millennia worth of civilisation but you couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a land of beautiful people in every sense of the word. Right from an incredible sense of dressing to affable and ever genuine smiles lighting up almost every single person’s face. But what really strikes a

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chord is the fact that music and automobiles rank among the Naga’s favourite things in life. My kind of people then!

It would take something rather special to get me this far away from home and that’s exactly what the annual Hornbill Festival is.

Don’t beat yourself up for not having heard of it. Despite being one of Asia’s biggest cultural festivals it also happens to be one of its best kept secrets. Essentially a week long party, the festival has everything from rock festivals, fashion pageants and wrestling to pork fat and chilli eating competitions. Oh and there was a TSD rally and an autocross event thrown in for good effect.

Now the Hornbill rally is no INRC style, all out win it or bin it type of race and neither is it a gruelling ball buster like the Raid. No this is a relaxed one day TSD rally that is more for the participants to have a

good time than anything else. The Hornbill rally has grown massively over the past five years. What started off as a small affair with a handful of contestants has grown to a large international event.

This year saw four foreign teams from Thailand, Vietnam, Britain and Japan and over 80 participants in total.

The 100km route for the day would begin at the Indira Gandhi stadium at Kohima. It would stretch through the forested hills around the capital before winding up just outside the city. All the cars would then group up and parade into the city under the backdrop of the rapidly fading sun and bustling night bazaar. We would be covering the event in a Scorpio and following the entire route with the participants. Once the event was flagged off by rally veteran Hari Singh we clambered in

F e at u r e

b r i o g oes f i s h i ng

Something fishy Fish and Kolkata is a divine combination. The Honda Brio helps us attain divinity

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Words Joseph Koraith Photography Gaurav S Thombre

irst impressions. Kolkata seems very unkempt. While the rest of the metros in India are on a spruce up spree, this city seems to be in no hurry to join the bandwagon. Be it the old Ambassador taxis that seem to be held together by its shiny yellow paint, the rusty trams, the tyrannical hand carts, the untidy streets or simply the roads that never seem to open up, Kolkata doesn’t seem too bothered about impressing the visitor. But that’s the charm about this city. You have to pry open Kolkata to get to the delicious inside. And in our quest to satiate our taste buds we used the Honda Brio to do just that.

To pry open a city like Kolkata isn’t easy.

You will end up going in circles, literally speaking too, considering almost every road over there is a one-way and that too in different directions at different times. And this was proved after we took more than an hour to get to our first destination – Kewpie’s Kitchen when we were only five minutes away in the first place. And even this was achieved because of the agility of the Brio. Its light

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steering meant that we could flick it around easily and take sharper turns. Its short length (3.6m) and small turning radius (4.5m) meant that we could easily manoeuvre it through the gazillion one ways to get to our destination. But when we finally got to Kewpie’s it was a delectable assault on our taste buds.

We started with the bhetki paturi. It’s the bhetki (red snapper fish) marinated with mustard paste and baked in a banana leaf.

Next up, the bhetki fry. Same fish, same mustard marination but fried in oil. The hilsa fish is a raging popularity here and so we had to try it. The illish bhapa, steamed hilsa served in gravy which again uses yellow and black mustard seeds and mustard oil. Yes. Lots of mustard is the way to go in West Bengal. Next on the menu was the daab chingri. Literally translated it means prawns in green coconut.

Sautéed prawns are cooked along with tender coconut paste and served in a coconut shell.

This disappeared very quickly.

But the one dish that completely blew us away was the chitol petir jhaal. Chitol – clown knife fish, petir – middle part of the fish, jhal - hot. Simply put it’s the middle part of

the chitol fish which is lightly fried and then cooked in red chilli or mustard sauce and served with rice and dal. And though Gaurav and I had stuffed myself before that, it was so delicious that we ended up ordering two. And then it was time for desserts. Enter Scott, the half French, half British waiter (an expert on Bengali cuisine!). Scott said that we should first have a little bit of the chutney. Why? Because the chutney, which has a bitter-sweet flavour, is used to help your taste buds make an easy transition from the bitter to the sweet.

Did it? No clue. We were too stuffed to know.

We savoured the mishti doi (sweetened curd), sang its praises and then waddled out.

We need to take a breather from all the eating and decided to explore Kolkata in the Brio. While our first stint through the city had given us a brief idea, the second one where we attempted to take the Brio to the iconic Howrah Bridge was a lesson in itself.

Here’s a dummy’s guide to driving in Kolkata.

Start car. Honk. Engage first gear. Honk.

Release clutch. Honk. Brake. Honk. Car in motion. Honk like there’s no tomorrow and don’t stop till the journey ends. Repeat cycle.