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c a r
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September 2010 Volume 13 Issue 1 Rs 150
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ANNIVERSARY
COLLECTOR’S EDITION GHOST & PHANTOM
5 GT & STREET GLIDE AT LAND’S END
TRACK TEST GSX-R VS R1
2010 F1 CAR TESTED BY
AUTOCROSS@ RANN OFKUTCH
KARUN
OUR FAVE DRIVER’S CARS ON OUR FAVE DIRT TRACK
DRIFT TEST
EVO SLK TT Z4 VW VENTO on INDIA’S MOST OVER-RATED ROAD
WHERE ONLY
LANDIES TREAD MERC GL
HEADS FOR HIGH TEA
THRIFTY DOZEN
SMALL CAR REAL WORLD COMPARO TATA NANO VW POLO FIAT GRANDE PUNTO NISSAN MICRA HYUNDAI i10 CHEVROLET BEAT MARUTI SWIFT MARUTI WAGONR FORD FIGO HYUNDAI i20 HONDA JAZZ TATA INDICA VISTA fortuner & PAJERO ON THE mughal road 100CC COMMUTERS ON A FRUGAL HILL CLIMB DRIFTING A PORSCHE 911 mAHINDRA RODEO & DURO FROM SRINAGAR TO KHARDUNG LA NANO TO THE WETTEST PLACE ON EARTH PRIUS in the fooTsteps of THE BUDDHA OUTLANDER CHASES GHOSTS OF SHOLAVARAM BEHIND THE SCENES AT FORCE INDIA F1 BENTLEY MULSANNE VS ROLLS-ROYCE GHOST AUDI A8 w12 jAGUAR XJ supersport INNOVA MEETS INDIA’S FIRST MPV HOW TO PHOTOGRAPH AUTOMOBILES OVERDRIVE GOES RACING & RALLYING red bull x-fighters
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We’ve ridden the Jive on the busy streets of Pune and on the Madras Motorsports Race Track at Chennai. And its convenience has blown our minds.
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Answer this simple question and you could ride home the latest auto-clutch wonder from TVS, the Jive!
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News to share? Call us on +91 20 33223341-50 or Fax us on +91 20 33223322 Email us at editorial@overdrive.co.in
motoringnews L o g o n t o w w w. ov e r d r i v e . i n / n e ws
The C200 Aero concept previews Ssangyong's new design direction.
Mahindra wins bid for Ssangyong Deal to be formalised in third quarter of 2010
Mahindra stands to gain a lot of technology and access to Ssangyongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s large international distribution channels from the acquisition
M
ahindra and Mahindra has emerged as the preferred bidder for the acquisition of a majority stake in Ssangyong Motor Company, the South Korean automobile manufacturer. By the time you read this, an MoU will have been signed between the two parties for a detailed due diligence and a formal agreement regarding the acquisition should be signed in two or three months. Ssangyong Motors was founded in 1954 to manufacture commercial vehicles.
It developed its first all-new automobile in 1988, and then established an alliance with Mercedes-Benz in the '90s to share and develop technology. It was owned by Daewoo from 1997 to 2000, but was sold when Daewoo ran into financial trouble. The Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC), 50 per cent owner in GM India, then purchased it in 2004. However, Ssangyong was put into receivership last January after recording a loss of $75.42 million. SAIC has since been found guilty
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News to share? Call us on +91 20 33223341-50 or Fax: +91 20 33223322 Email us at mailbox@overdrive.co.in
motorcyclenews L o g o n t o w w w. ov e r d r i v e . i n / n e w s
Red shift Rossi to ride for Ducati in 2011
T
he official word is finally out. Both Yamaha and Ducati have announced that Valentino Rossi will be quitting the former to join the latter in 2011. The nine-time World Champion has signed a two-year deal with the Bologna factory to seal the all-Italian dream team, and write a third chapter to his career in the premier class, after bringing title success first to Honda and then to Yamaha. Should his quest for another title be successful, he will be the first rider in history to win on three different makes of motorcycle. Rossi was disinclined to speak about the matter, preferring to express himself with a hand-written note appended to Yamaha’s announcement of his departure after seven years with the team. It took the
form of a love letter to ‘she – my M1 Yamaha’. After thanking Yamaha chief Masao Furusawa, a couple of other Japanese staff, plus Jerry Burgess and his pit crew, Rossi waxed lyrical about the bike. Translated from the original Italian, it goes: “Many things have changed since that far-off time in 2004, but especially ‘she’, my M1, has changed. At that time she was a poor middle-grid position MotoGP bike, derided by most of the riders and the MotoGP workers. Now, after having helped her to grow and improve, you can see her smiling in her garage, courted and admired, treated as top of the class. Unfortunately even the most beautiful love stories finish, but they leave a lot of wonderful memories, like when my M1 and I kissed for the first time on the
grass at Welkom, when she looked straight in my eyes and told me ‘I love you’”. Rossi’s seven years at Yamaha have made racing history, and even this year he was saying he hoped to finish his racing career with the factory. But he had already sounded a warning: the team was not big enough for him and Lorenzo. Yamaha’s reluctance to dispense with the talented younger rider triggered the fateful move. Ducati actually pre-empted Yamaha’s announcement with a teaser on the website – a headline reading ‘Rossi in Red’ was put up on during race-day, not to mention some unguarded remarks by company president Gabriele del Torchio in an earlier interview with a US motorcycle magazine. One hour after Yamaha’s written announcement del
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12 years of OD
World Rally Group N Subar
Hatches to L First Nano renderings - world e Berlin
Tom Kristensen
Casey Stoner
Nurburging Nordschliefe Jeju Island Juha Kankunnen Rio de Janeiro
Wroclaw
Ferrari 599 Estoril
Nick Mason
Petter Solberg San Marino
Nicole Scherzinger Alex Barros
Tokyo, Hokkaido, Mt Aso, Fukuoka, Takahara, Mt Fuji
Loris Capirossi
Madrid, Spain Mercedes-Benz C 63 AMG Barcelona, Esther Canadas
Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan Single-seater test abroad
Monza
Suzuki Hayabusa
Bogota, Colombia Randy de Puniet
RupertRann Stadtler of Kutch Chris Pfeiffer Vienna
Isle of Man Maranello
Khardung La Formula Asia car driven
Athens John Abraham
M
Lisbon, Setubal First journos in full season of INRC
24-hour endurance record
Bugatti Veyron
AudiHarbin R8
Kaza, Ladakh
Sete Gibern
Winners at Raid de
Curitiba, Brazil
Adrian Van Hooydonk
Marcus Gronholm BMW M3 Imola Adrian Sutil Losail
Jerez
Pretoria
Ratan Tata
Paul Ricard Silent Valley Mick Doohan
Possum Bourne Heidi Klum M F1 car test Sebastien Loeb
Valenti
Wales Verona, Brescia La Futa Commercial Vehicles m Beijing, Shanghai
Scotland 24-hour mot
Renault F1 c
N-S,
0-100-0 test Budapest Goteborg Arjeplog Gordon Murray
Phoenix
Rome Robb
Sergio Marchionne
Circuit de Catalu
Rekong PeoSilverston Coorg Colin McR
Superca
Giacomo Agostini Twin Ring Moteg
Knee-down on an Indian m
Monaco Siachen base camp Chris Atkinson
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DRIVES/TESTS PLACES PEOPLE FIRSTS OD IN MOTORSPORT
ru
Tommi Makkinen
Ladakh exclusive San Francisco Sardinia
Fiorano Bhutan
Motorcycle dyno test
Impreza
Seal Prague Jammu
nau First motorsport magazine
e Himalaya
Milan
Goodwood
Bentley Mulsanne Lambo SV Sriharikota
Monster Tajima
Borgo Panigale
Ooty
Pachmarhi Indian automotive awards
ds - car & motorcycle
INRC, JKNRC and Polo Cup cars driven
Pink Vitantonio Liuzzi Bologna Miami911 Turbo La Carrera Panamericana
y
Karun Chandhok
Gallardo Superleggera
inoRossi magazine Fuji Speedway
Carlos Ghosn
torcycle test
G-Quad
Enstone
Eastnor Castle Ingolstadt, Germany
All states in India Superbikes magazine
Singapore
Ari Vatanen
St Bernard Pass Test equipment
car driven
, E-W records
Vijay Mallya
Kabini
Logan Megamileage Run
Nicky Hayden Sao Paolo
Brands Hatch Lewis Hamilton
Colin Edwards Ferrari India Drive
Valencia
bie Madison Sakhir unya Rolls-Royce Ghost
Winners at Desert Storm 11 hours/1100km on Superbikes
Ian Callum Sydney, Canberra
Sepang
ne Venice Bangkok New Caledonia Rae Mille Miglia
Patricia Ruiz
Patrick Le Quement
Track test
SLSBratislava AMG Jacky Ickx
ars magazine
gi
Auto power surveys Mudumulai
Allan McNish
Michael Schumacher
Istanbul
motorcycle Autodrome Santâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Agata Autopolis Hockenhiem
n
Leipzig, Stuttgart, Munich, Frankfurt, Wolfsburg
Single-seater racer test
Luca de Meo Stephane Winkelmann
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F e at u r e
Rol ls - Royc e G h ost & P h a n to m
Cream Rolls Understanding opulence in the Rolls-Royce Ghost and Phantom Words Shubhabrata Marmar Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
ROllsroyce duo
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C om pa ro
be nt l ey mulsanne
vs
Ro l ls - royc e gh ost
Knights of the Empire The V12 engined Rolls-Royce Ghost jousts with the V8 endowed Bentley Mulsanne Words Ray Hutton Photography Bentley, Rolls-Royce
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ore bangs for your buck doesn’t apply in this shoot-out between two of the greatest names in the car business. Rolls-Royce is happy to join OVERDRIVE’s celebration of the V12 engine, as all of its current cars, including the latest Ghost, have versions of the 12-cylinder engine from BMW, the company’s owner. Bentley, under the supervision of Volkswagen, uses a V12 – actually a W12 – for the Continental series but its
new flagship, the Mulsanne, continues with a V8 engine of the kind that has powered Bentleys (and Rolls-Royces) for more than half a century. Although some – even at Bentley – claim that the Mulsanne is a competitor for the stately Rolls-Royce Phantom – in reality it is the Mulsanne and Ghost that are rivals. For the first time, the Bentley is more expensive than the equivalent Rolls: in the UK, £220,000 (Rs 1.58 crore) against £195,000 (Rs 1.4 crore). So here they are: two large luxury saloons, built and furnished in the finest quality by famous British com-
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autoc ross @ rann of kutc h
Dust devils
The little Rann of Kutch is no place for anything but the toughest off-road heavies, so what exactly were we doing here with 5 sedans, 2 hatchbacks and 2 soccer mom wagons? Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
RANN OF KUTCH
T
he anniversary brief was simple, get out and have an adventure. And one of the most adventurous spots in India and also one of our perennial favourites is the little Rann of Kutch. Problem was that we’d taken every SUV there is in the market to that flatland. And while you may think there is no dearth of original thought at OVERDRIVE, 12 years is a long time to exhaust almost every conceivable driving project we could think of executing within India. But we are an imaginative bunch and between issue closings we are a riot of ideas. So it wasn’t long before someone came up with the idea of organising an autocross in the Rann of Kutch. Brilliant, did you say, well so did we. Then came the hard part, which cars should we take to do the autocross in because obviously the Rann is no place for your regular everyday commuters. Yet the SUV list was exhausted and it made no sense to repeat the same set of offenders as those in previous years. So we finally came up with a list, which should have been obvious from the start. We decided to enlist the best performance cars from every segment. Now that could have meant a lot cars, but there was yet another problem. The edit team has eight members and that meant only 8 cars could be driven to the Rann from wherever. Which then turned out to
be good thing since we hit on taking two of the best performance cars from every segment. So we picked on the Maruti Suzuki Swift, perhaps the greatest performance hatch to ever hit Indian shores. Taking that car head-on was the newest challenger to the hot hatch throne the Volkswagen Polo. In the C-segment we needed to look no further than the Maruti Suzuki SX4 and the Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia, both the preferred choice for rally drivers international and Indian. Then came the executive class and the decision got a lot tougher. There were several cars that could make the cut, right from the Laura up to the new BMW 7 Series. So instead we got to the philosophies behind these cars and decided on pitting an all-wheel drive car against a rear-wheel drive one which led to the two best with those aggregates, the BMW 5 Series and the Audi A4. And then to make matters even more interesting, we got our hands on the two most incredulous SUVs available in India, the new Audi Q7 4.2TDI and the earth shattering BMW X6 3od. Now the task at hand for each of these cars was simple. Which could go fastest on dirt over a course designed by us. This wasn’t going to be easy, the surface had a character looser than a tramp in a red light area and at nearly 43 degrees C in the shade (ironically there is no shade in the Rann), the devil had turned up the thermostat to hotter than hell...
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Life in the 300kmph zone Can words describe the experience of driving a Formula 1 car?
12th
Words Karun Chandhok Photography www.sutton-images.com
“What’s it like to drive a Formula 1 car?” It’s a question I get asked a million times so when Sirish posed the same question and asked me to do a story on it I first said ‘no’. After all there really is no one line answer to it and I wasn’t even sure where to begin. On the one hand it’s an extremely complex, difficult and complicated process but on the other, for someone like me, it’s a very natural thing to do and I wasn’t convinced that I could truly explain everything that goes into driving a Formula 1 car. In the end, being the convincing editor that he is, I found myself writing this story, albeit with an idiot proof guide on what you, dear reader, would want to know. Driving a Formula 1 car and being a Formula 1 driver are two very different things. Being a Formula 1 driver involves a bigger picture of doing PR work, sponsor promos, fitness training, engineering meetings, contract negotiations and the whole lot in between. But ultimately, the best part of our job is actually driving the race cars. I feel incredibly privileged to lay claim to
ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
2010 F1 RACER TEST
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Dr i v e
Audi A8 L
Work station You couldnt get more sophisticated office space than the new Audi A8 L. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the business Words Bertrand Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;souza
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Jagua r XJ L
Emotional quotient The sensible choice would be the car on the previous pages. But if your heart is signing the cheque this is the car for you Words Sirish Chandran
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’m going to be brutally honest about this: if you’ve got some serious cash to blow on a luxury car you will be best served by something made in the Fatherland. Between them Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi provide sufficient options in arrestingly diverse segments to satisfy every little quirk you harbour. Serious monies might have your eyes wandering across the English channel, towards Rolls-Royce and Bentley, but who do you think they’re owned and run by? Damn right – the Germans. Germany is to luxury cars what warm, gooey chocolate cake is to a fat boy. The default choice. The sensible choice.
Which leaves us, where exactly, with Jaguar? Enthusiasts will natter on about Jag’s history – the most beautiful car ever (Etype), the fastest cars of its day (D-type, XJ 220), the most desirable (XK120) – but which modern day Jag is hanging on your bedroom wall? They’ve always been on the fringes, haven’t they, turning out cars that neither worry nor dent sales of the German brigade. I mean, is the world really asking for an option to the S-Class, 7 Series or A8? Particularly when, as you’ve read on the previous pages, the new Audi is just so brutally, clinically, staggeringly good? It’s a question I wrestled with as I eased myself into the back of the new XJ, a long
wheelbase version I presume from the vast amount of leg room, and let out a long low whistle as the full impact of the cabin smacks me in the face. Hmm… I wonder as I prod, poke and then, to my utter shock, discover the cubby hole under the armrest is lined in felt of a shockingly deep purple hue. As an English journo offered, it’s like having an audience with the Queen and discovering she’s wearing a purple thong. Abso-shocking-lutely unexpected. But it makes you smile. And that’s the XJ, or for that matter any Jaguar for you – a car to make you smile. Design director Ian Callum calls it the quintessentially British character, ‘the subtle touch
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B M W 5 GT AND H AR L EY- DAV I DSO N STR EET GL I D E
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Mobius trip
12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
NAINITAL
Out touring on machines meant for it
Words Shubhabrata Marmar Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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Tail happy
Is the Porsche a car that lends itself to a bit of drifting? Oh yeah Words & Photography Sirish Chandran
D
rifting isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the easiest trick in the world. Takes years of practice, lots of off-road excursions, plenty of ragged tyres, even a bent car or two and is best attempted in something cheap and easily disposable. Except that anything cheap and easily disposable will just not drift. A Maruti 800 for instance will not drift. Neither will a Nano, unless you plan on checking out how strong the roof is. No, learning to drift requires a car that lends itself to a bit of drifting. Something
with a 350PS engine, preferably hung out back to induce some wild tail-happy moments, with power going to the rear wheels to kick that tail out. Something like a Porsche 911. Which brings me to the Porsche Experience Centre at Silverstone in the UK. Learning to drift a 911 on any public road of any sort is suicidal at best. Sure, Porsches no longer have that appetite to chuck you into the hedges at the slightest provocation but anybody who says they havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t spun a car while drifting should be slapped hard SEP 2010 overdrive
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the u ltim ate pors c
he ex perie nce!
What makes the Po Exper rsche ience 911 on Centre pheno e of th , Silver menal e best stone, p sports e circuit rform y o u cars in will ge ance a s, all a the wo t a uni nd ast t the h behin q o rld? A o ue opp nishin me of d the w t the P o g B rtunit ritish handl heel o orsche y to ex motor ing of f the w sport. a 911 o perien orldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s A once ce the n a va most i riety o in a lif conic s f etime excitin ports oppor cars - a g tunity nd dri to get ve like a god!
Answer th simple que is stion The most ico
nic Porsche of a ll time is the : A. 911 B. C ayenne C. 3 56
Mail your answ ers and address to contest@overd rive.co.in, subj ec t â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Porscheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, or snail mail to the editorial offi ce address or SMS OD<space >PORSCHE<space >ANSWER to 518 18
Terms and conditions: Contest open to all Indian nationals possessing a valid driving license, passport and being over 22 years of age. Winners will be provided with return air tickets to the UK, accommodation for one night near Silverstone, transfers to and from the airport and circuit. All other expenses will have to be borne by contestants. Contestants will have to arrange visas and other travel formalities. Prizes non-transferable. The decision of Precision Cars India and Infomedia 18 is final and non-negotiable. Contest closes on October 20, 2010
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W i n!
All E
porsc xpenses centr he expe paid trip t o e, silv rience ersto ne, UK !
www.porscheindia.com JUN 2010 overdrive
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T e st
m ega s mal l car comparo
Get real Thirteen hatches engage in a battle royale
Words Bertrand Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;souza / Kshitij Sharma Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
A
ll of our favourite destinations for a mega hatchback comparison stood rejected – they were all being visited too often or we couldn’t reach them in the middle of the monsoons. And with adventure being such an integral part of this issue we decided to throw a curve ball; give our annual small car mega test a completely different twist from our norm, one that would produce results that would be as relevant as our tests but approach your buying decision from a completely new standpoint. A completely different test? That meant no travelling. And by extension, no testing. At least not on our part. What we did was find ourselves a vast make-shift test area, gathered a testing crew of interesting people from non-automotive fields to accurately represent you, the buying public, and created a series of 12 fun but insightful tests that represent real world situations for these small cars. Out of some scien-
MEGA HATCH COMPARO
tific tabulation and monitoring would emerge India’s best ‘real world’ small car. And we wouldn’t be the ones finding the winning car – you would. Step one was to take every single small car in the market, no matter its price point. That meant everything from the Nano right up to the Jazz. The Nano specifically - after all when it was launched we hailed it has a proper car, not some haphazardly cobbled together contraption, and we wanted to give it the respect it deserves by pitting it against other cars that qualify as small cars. Others dismiss it with the usual ‘at this price this is all you’re gonna get’ refrain, our converse of that argument is ‘at this price you get all this!’ So we begin with the most unusual test we’ve ever undertaken at this magazine - putting city cars through city tasks that might sound mundane but actually make a lot more sense that outright dynamic abilities.
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T e st
SPO RTSCAR T rAC k T EST
â&#x20AC;ŚI could do this with one hand! Karun Chandhok decides to take some time off from F1 duties to hijack our sports car track test! Words Bertrand Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;souza Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
Track test
E
N O. 1
C A R
&
B I K E
M A G A Z I N E
Subscriber’s copy
I N D I A’ S
www.overdrive.in
January 2010 Volume 12 Issue 05 Rs 100
STARRING LAMBO GALLARDO LP560-4 PORSCHE PANAMERA 4S MERC SL63 AMG AUDI TT BMW Z4 AUDI A6 3.0 BMW 530D MERC E350 AUDI A4 3.2 BMW 320D SKODA LAURA 1.8 VW JETTA FORD FIESTA 1.6S HONDA CITY BMW X6 PORSCHE CAYENNE TURBO
ight months is a long time to visit the track after, though in between several of us have found the time individually to participate in several events, make that races. But every now and then we like to head to a racetrack to enjoy driving some very sharp cars purely because it’s a lot of fun. Like now, we’re back at the MMRT in Chennai and we’re back to burning some rubber, make that a lot of rubber. Because unlike the last time (January 2010) where we had India’s top notch rally driver and APRC specialist Gaurav Gill, we decided to enlist a driver from an entirely different culture, Karun Chandhok. Now KC is no stranger to speed, in fact the MMRT is where he learnt his craft before going on
to become the only Indian driver in Formula One today. So getting him back to the racetrack where he honed his skills takes little effort. Then there are the cars which are equally tempting, sports cars which unfortunately are largely used as posers and ego trips. The Audi TT Coupe 3.2 quattro Stronic, BMW Z4 sDrive 35i, MercedesBenz SLK 200 Kompressor and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. It’s an impressive line-up and though eight months ago you did read about the TT and the Z4 at this very track, things have changed. Firstly this is a test of the 50-lakh-rupee sports cars available in India and then there’s the new Merc SLK and the Mitsubishi Evo, both of which want the crown of India’s best sports car. So down to brass tacks with OVERDRIVE’s racer-at-large, Karun Chandhok.
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Dollar detour The new Jetta marks a radical shift for VW - the start of the ‘Americanisation’ of key models. We go to San Francisco to find out if it works Words Sirish Chandran
O
f all the stereotypes you can fling at the USA, the one that sticks like glue is all roads are arrow straight with not a corner in sight. Stick to the freeways and the stereotype is reinforced, six lanes drawn out with a ruler stretching far out into the horizon with the only corner in sight being the exit ramp. And to make matters worse, a 55mph (90kmph) speed limit is aggressively enforced making driving, in the land of the automobile, rather… well… boring. No wonder drivers wear lipstick, talk on
the phone, munch burgers, paint nails and shoot guns – all at the same time. Cities? More of the same: neatly laid out grids with roads intersecting at right angles. Terrific planning, boring driving. Except for one bizarrely crooked street in San Francisco, a city that has the most brilliantly rising and falling roads in the world. Such are ’Frisco’s elevation changes that it is enough to induce a mild case of vertigo. Stand at the head of some roads and you can see them rise, fall and rise again for miles – arrow straight obviously. At most intersec-
tions the road to your right will go straight up, to your left dip straight down. Charge down at speed, hit the intersection and your car will take off – just like Steve McQueen in the dark green Mustang in Bullit (one of the worst movies ever made featuring one of the best car chase scenes ever). But Crooked Street remains the city’s highlight. Eight excruciatingly tight hairpins in the span of just 400 metres qualify it for the (disputed) tag of the crookedest street in the world. Situated on a hill the story goes that the road’s design was necessitated because
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F e at u r e
r e d bul l x- f ig h t e rs mad r i d
Up in the air FMX is the most spectacular of motorcycle sports in the world today Words Shubhabrata Marmar
S
ome things you really do need to see for yourself. As a brighteyed young kid I remember that running the length of a football time took a great deal of time for me. At the other end, I’d be sweaty and breathless. And yet, right now, I’m standing with Robbie Madison, who now holds the world record for jumping a motorcycle through the longest distance. A staggering 107m. I’ve seen the youtube video - you should too - but I’d have liked to see it for myself. Freestyle motocross is like that. Most of us have seen the images. An impossibly colourfully clad rider in some weird anatomic contortion that most of us would find hard to replicate on a yoga mat. And this person is doing it mid-air. The photograph usually puts your eye at his level. That’s a lie. You won’t know that till you sit in a stand and hear the tearing two-stroke engine on the motocrosser explode out of a narrow access tunnel on to an impossibly sloping ramp. The momentum will fling the motorcycle and rider into the waiting sky. The violence and impact of
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the moment is the same as a nuclear explosion I imagine, but with consequences that are infinitely easier to deal with. The laws of physics set up an elegant trajectory, the rider comes off his seat and proceeds, in the five-odd seconds he has before gravity overcomes momentum to show us what appears impossible. Over the course of the two and a half hour Red Bull X-Fighters finals at Madrid, I saw the motorcycles upside down, leaned over to horizontal, pointed the wrong way, in a 90-degree wheelie position. What kind of madmen are these? I hear FMX evolved out of boredom. As the motorcycles got better and faster, these riders began to find themselves up in the air for increasingly larger amounts of time. As their skills grew, they learnt to begin turns in midair, to use the throttle and brakes in the midair to position the bike as they wanted to. But they found that playing cards up in the air was impossible as a way to pass the dead time. So they decided to see, literally, how far they could push their machine control and the laws of physics. I think we can safely say that they’ve made considerable progress.
The action for the finals was topped by Robbie Madison with his new trick, the 360 degree Body Varial. The trick involves turning the body a full circle just above the motorcycle’s seat while in mid-air.
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Higround her From a points-less phase to aiming for the podium, Mallya’s Force India is a team with nowhere to go but up Words Sirish Chandran Photography Sutton images
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have one very clear objective – at the Indian Grand Prix Force India has to be on the podium. Three years ago when Vijay Mallya made that bold statement not many, nobody actually, gave him a hope in hell. Forget the fact that the Indian Grand Prix had a big question mark on it (back then it was scheduled for 2010, but now it’s on course for 2011) but the Spyker-Ferrari F1 cars Vijay Mallya inherited were determinedly circulating at the back of the grid. One point, that was the sum total from 2007, thanks to a fortuitous eighth place for Adrian Sutil at the Japanese Grand Prix. This was a backmarker of a team, a pale shadow of the Jordan era and the following year, the first year Force India’s colours appeared on the grid, it clocked up a grand total of zero points. Forget podiums, just being able to score points seemed like a dream far too distant. And even when an occasional silver lining shone through, like at Monaco where Sutil was running as high as fourth, bad luck never deserted the team (Kimi Raikonnen, running fifth, slammed into the back of Sutil’s car, taking him out). An Indian team being competitive in the blue riband world of Formula 1 looked absolutely implausible. To some having the tri-colour on the sides of cars running at the back of the grid was perhaps embarrassing to a nation in its ascendancy.
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Force
india Live!
Win!!! TWO lucky readers
win an all expenses paid trip to watch the Formula 1 season finale at Abu Dhabi on November 14, 2010
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Answer this simple question Force India’s racing headquarters is at a. Bengaluru b. Silverstone c. Monaco Mail your answers to contest@overdrive.co.in, subject ‘Force India F1 Abu Dhabi’ or snail mail to the editorial office address SMS OD<space>ForceIndia<space>ANSWER to 51818
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wn e a lesser kno r a ls il H i ll o il The K e state of Tamhills th in e g n a r l il e h the base of th Nadu. From 70 odd hairpins, to the top are ing a milestone each one hav any hairpins are left listing how mbber on to screech ru
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Hairpins ahead Up and down a 70-hairpin hill on commuter motorcycles Words Abhay Verma
Photography Halley Prabhakar, Charles Pennefather
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Apex hunting with two of the best litre-class superbikes in India Words Shubhabrata Marmar Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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tuck in as far as I can as the throttle is rolled to the stop. The motorcycle’s fury reaches a crescendo and the roar of the engine and angry howl of the wind turns incredibly scary. I glance at the speedo for a moment and note with a gulp that it’s already past 185 and climbing in 20kmph increments faster than your eyes can keep up. This is the back straight of the MMST track at Sriperumbudur. It is also complete lunacy.
The beauty of it is that either of the two motorcycles here can pull off this kind of performance without breaking into the proverbial sweat. The 2010 R1 is the older of the two motorcycles here, launch-wise, and you’ve read my story on riding the bike in OVERDRIVE back in March. The Suzuki GSX-R1000 is newer, marginally more expensive, a bit more powerful and the newest player at the very top of the Indian motorcycle market. These two are, with the launch of the Rs 17.5 lakh Honda VFR, not the SEP 2010 overdrive
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High tea Putting the Mercedes GL-Class’ off-roading pedigree to the test Words Shubhabrata Marmar Photography Aditya Bedre
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hat does adventure smell like? To me, it smells like an unfamiliar cup of coffee in the morning. It’s a toe stubbed against an unfamiliar chair or table leg, teeth brushed groggily over an unfamiliar basin. And a clock on a table that reads out an unusually early morning in a completely new place with a completely new destination waiting for me somewhere out there. And so it was that I came to Coimbatore for the first time. My brief was to go check out some great driving roads, on- and offroad wise if possible with Coimbatore as my jump off point. It sounded easy enough until I started to call the various rally drivers and tuners who call this area home. And then it became a can of worms. Coimbatore, they’ll have you believe is a veritable panacea of driving roads. And there’s like a gazillion of them in the area. The fabled road to Topslip was quickly demoted in favour of two routes which both lead to Ooty (or Utti, if you pay attention to the Hindi milestones) and are both terrific. I was told to head out of town towards the airport, take the narrow road to Mettupalayam and at that busy market town,
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look for the road to Kotagiri - this was our return route. Past that turn we would discover the road that snaked via Mulli and Gedde up to Ooty. They told me that the road was absolutely a driver’s delight - corner after corner of pure, unadulterated fun. The straights up to the mountain were short and that the temperature would drop constantly until we were high up in chilly Ooty (or Ootacamund, if you pay attention to the place in early Brit history - when they failed entirely to pronounce the name and decided to shorten it for, er, sheer bloody convenience, old chap). The stage is set for our vehicle, then. When I landed at Coimbatore, the MercedesBenz GL 350 CDI dwarfed every other vehicle in the parking lot by a considerable margin. It’s Mercedes’ Audi Q7 nemesis. But while the Q has curvier lines to alleviate its size, the GL is straight lined which is a lot more brutal aesthetically speaking and a lot more imposing as well. In India, that is a good thing. You could be the world’s most timid person, but once you’re enshrined behind the wheels of the GL-Class, everything gives way no matter how softly you ask. We also chose the GL for the story because aside from seating a Karan Johar-style family in its spacious there’s-a-button-foreverything cabin, it also happens to have some serious off-roading equipment. Which
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Land lord How great can a 25-year-old Land Rover drive get? Surpriseâ&#x20AC;Ś Words Vijayendra Vikram Photography Mohd Nasir
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’ve had many life changing experiences. The first time I touched 100kmph on a bike left me super thrilled. Then, doing 200kmph and nearly 300kmph on two wheels taught me what it takes to do big numbers without putting my life in danger. Launching a Porsche 911 Turbo at full blast I learnt that it takes exactly three days to set your heart back in its right place after the maddening thrust has put it right in my mouth. There have been more and the one thing that connects them all of is the clichéd need for speed. For me it has always been about going ever faster. Until now. Far from civilisation, in the hills of Meghalaya, away from basic amenities like
phones, running water, electricity and even roads, speed is the last thing on my mind. Survival is paramount. And to survive you need to get around. Either by foot, pack mule or the only motorised vehicle that plies in these parts – rickety Land Rover Series IIIs. Not Mahindras or Gypsy, here the Landie reigns supreme; it is the only one that can get you from village to village. Although I drove it for a mere 50 kilometres and the maximum speed is no more than 20kmph, this was a different thrill altogether. In this day and age, it is hard to imagine a Land Rover which is not flashy on the outside, doesn’t bear a special registration number or boasts acres of leather and wood inside. Much before the Range Rovers were conceived, Land Rover Series I, II and III
ruled the world. They were everywhere - battlefields, war zones, rescue operations, wild safaris et al and everybody from the United Nations peace-keepers to Indiana Jones used one in their crusades. Land Rovers started life post WWII, when luxury car maker Rover was forced to move to a shed after its factory was destroyed in the war. Setting up lines for making cars again seemed unfeasible as there was no demand then and petrol was rationed. So the brand thought about developing a rugged vehicle that could carry people and also serve in the farm. Steel was also rationed after the war but Rover had access to surplus aircraft grade aluminium (birmabright, a lightweight rustproof alloy of aluminium and magnesium). So that’s what they used, not knowing that its sturdy
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The road not taken One of India’s most historically significant roads, finally comes to light! Words & photography Bertrand D’souza
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THE MUGHAL ROAD
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ou could travel between Bandra and Worli on the Sea Link and marvel at just how far architectural technology has progressed in India. You could drive between Mumbai and Pune in roughly under two hours or all across India on the Golden Quadrilateral in under ten days and wonder at the infrastructure that makes it possible. You could drive across the Escape Road at TopSlip, the highest motorable road in India, south of the lofty Himalayas and be
impressed at the dogged determination of the British to create this road decades ago just to escape the Japanese invasion during WW1. There are several other roads like these that are a unique part of India’s history, but few are as significant as the Mughal Road. The name itself conjures up visions of vast armies or caravans plying across an ancient path that existed since the Mughal era. Which is not far from the truth. Now the actual Mughal Road runs between Bafliaz in Poonch district to Shopiyan in Pulwama district in Kashmir. This 89-kilometre stretch that extends from as low as
4000 feet up to 11,460 feet above sea level however is part of a longer trade route that existed between India and parts of Afghanistan extending all the way up to modern day Uzbekistan which was all a part of the Mughal empire. The road is supposed to have originated in Jhelum, a town in the Punjab province in Pakistan and then touched Kotli (in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir), Thanamandi (Rajouri district) and finally Chandimarh located in Pir Panjal mountains while one branch crossed over to Shopian via Heepora. The Mughal Road came into existence SEP 2010 overdrive
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KAZ WA MPV
Once upon a time India’s favourite MPV meets India’s first ever MPV Words Halley Prabhakar Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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n 1998, Rajah Group, a Kerala-based beedi manufacturer and ayurvedic health care service provider decided to diversify its business. It’s a full two years before Toyota entered India with the Qualis, whose unprecedented sales would establish MPVs as a viable segment in India. The Rajah folks, in fact, do not know this. Their plan is to put their own MPV, the Kazwa into production. India’s first MPV was constructed at their small facility at Chavakkad near Trichur. It’s a tragic story. Rajah ended up making only seven MPVs and none were offered on sale. The Kazwa, though, was featured in the very first issue of OVERDRIVE. Now, 12 years later, with the MPV market about to explode thanks to the imminent arrival of a few Innova-beaters, I thought it was time to revisit the Kazwa. It’s only appropriate, right? I heard that there was a Kazwa being driven around in Miraj, a small town about four hours from Pune. So that’s where I headed, appropriately enough, in an Innova. I was to meet Shony Akkara of Rajah Motors who has been driving a Kazwa for the past 12 years and as I was to discover, he’s quite proud of what they have accomplished. The family which owns Rajah Motors (now called Kajah Motors Private Limited) it turns out, are hardcore auto enthusiasts. The Kazwa wasn’t their first dabble in the auto arena. They first began in the early 90s with the intention of bringing in a kit sports car. The project was shelved after the search for a suitable partner turned up nothing. It was in 1994 that they got hooked on the idea of an MPV for India. They thought it was a good idea for India and that it would sell well. Thus began project Kazwa. My first audience with the vehicle itself came shortly after I’d met Shony in Miraj. A pristine, beige-coloured example stood in the parking lot looking emphatically like it belonged in the
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We drive a Nano to Cherrapunjee to experience the monsoon’s fury, but find the rain gods on holiday Words Charles Pennefather Photography Mohd Nasir
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Visiting the lost world of Indian motorsport at Sholavaram Words Shubhabrata Marmar Photography Aditya Bedre/Chandhok Archives/Bose Archives
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sholavaram
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t’s 6am in the morning, at the very end of Chennai’s fleeting winter. The air feels cool and crisp and best of all it’s a Sunday. And not just any Sunday, it’s the first Sunday of February which means it’s time to go watch racing. Jaikumar, rubs sleep out of his eyes and rushes through his morning, his friends will be waiting for him at the bus stand. He hopes they’ve got the tickets. The race event is now sold out and black-market tickets are all that’s available. In Sholavaram, a throbbingly alive airstrip at Red Hills about 25km from Chennai city, the air is already ringing with the glorious sound of performance engines. This will be a hectic day and hundreds of racing cars and motorcycles will be wrung out thoroughly. Vicky Chandhok - already a famous racing and rally driver in his own right and yet to become famous as Karun Chandhok’s father is already bustling about, getting his Formula 2 car ready for the day. It’s one of the faster machines on the track, allowing him to hit as much as 250kmph on the track during races. He wonders if his usual
The images of Sholavaram still rock your world. Bullets, RDs, TZs, F1 cars, F2 cars, F5000s... vehicles of all kinds came to race. Ditto the people - an amazing confluence of hobby, amateur and pro racers
friends and nemeses, the usual motley crew of Vijay Mallya with his Ensign F1 car, Karivardhan in his ‘Black Beauty’, The Maharaja of Gondal in his F5000 and Ajit Thomas in his Chevron F3 will put one over him or not. Not a chance, he thinks to himself. Back in Chennai, Indu Chandhok, Vicky’s father is a happy man. His son is doing rather well in the races, the Madras Motor Sports Club, an organisation that grew along with, and because of him, is doing well too. The races are popular and the line of succession of the club looks strong and stable - so the event’s future isn’t under threat either. All he has to do is go to Sholavaram and have a tremendous day out with the family and the racers and his club friends. Life couldn’t possible get better than this. On the outskirts, in another household, a boy called Subhash Chandra Bose has been up really early in the morning as well. The SEP 2010 overdrive
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Is the new Volkswagen Vento endowed with rival-slaying virtues? Words Vijayendra Vikram Photography Gaurav S Thombre
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n this issue Team OD is driving on roads a petrolhead would give an arm and leg to motor on. I’ve been on most of the drives and rides and every one of them has been legendary. Except this one. Here I am on this arid, congested, polluted stretch of NH 8 between Jaipur and Gurgaon. Tractors come at me in the fast lane, cows charge across the road, and there are potholes to be dodged. It shouldn’t feature in our celebration of three of our most favourite things in the world – cars, bikes and roads – but it is. And that’s because it has a legendary tag attached to it. Delhi-Jaipur is a road we know so well we
could drive it in our sleep. Without fail, every month, one of us boards a flight to Delhi and hits this road. AMG supercars, R1, ’Busa, Civic, Fiesta, Honda scooters, A6, Q5, S80, XC90, 5 GT, Harleys – can’t keep count of all we have ridden/driven on this road. Once this was a great road to be driving on, Shumi remembers the time he did DelhiJaipur in a Maruti 800 in just under three hours with the speedo pinned at 120kmph. Not any more. Today there’s road works, mangled tarmac, phenomenal volumes of traffic and a Touareg parked by the roadside after ramming broadside into a cow. It’s a highway to give you high blood pressure
and road rage. In short, the NH 8 has now become India’s most over-rated road. Good thing then that I’m ensconced in the back of the new Volkswagen Vento. The booted Polo is finally out on the road, ready to give the City a few nightmares, and this is its acid test. No, not the road, but the back seat. You see, for all the praise we’ve heaped on the Polo the one thing that has always stood out like a sore thumb has been rear seat space. Or the lack of it. Just tacking a boot on to the Polo, a la the Swift Dzire, would have allowed sighs of relief at Honda and let the City to continue with its free reign in this segment. No, what the Vento
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Photo finish The art and craft of auto photography Words & photography Gaurav S Thombre
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ot for everyone is how fast a car or bike goes or how well it handles. For me the attraction lies in their aesthetics, in capturing the details, the interplay of light and shadow, amplifying their visual sex appeal. My job is to make a car or bike look good, no matter what the colour, no matter where the sun is, no matter what the speed. That’s what I love doing and here’s an attempt to share some of the knowledge I’ve gleaned in years of photographing automobiles - moving sculptures, if you wish. My background is of course in the arts. My maternal uncles were all professional photographers and I was 14 years old when the photography bug really bit - hard. Pointand-shoot cameras were my first tools of trade naturally and then I progressed to the Nikon FM10 when I began a course in commercial arts. Using that Nikon allowed me mastery over SLR techniques that are the basics of all manual photography. I also had the opportunity to hone my photography skills working as a freelance photographer in fashion and interiors shoots. But I have to admit in my four years as student-cum-photographer, I never got around to shooting any automobiles. December 2007 was when I walked into the OVERDRIVE offices, did my first trial shoots and realised just how different automotive photo journalism was compared to fashion/interior work. It was an eyeopener but also a phenomenal opportunity to immerse myself in the art and science of car photography. Here the photographer doesn’t just pick up the camera and shoot; visualisation and aesthetic appreciation are a must and he has to look beyond the vehicle not just as a means of transport but
transform it into an object of beauty. My kit currently comprises a Canon 1D Mark 3 and the lenses at my disposal are 1635mm L series, 70-200mm IS and 28-105 mm. How important is the kit? You may be surprised to hear this but it’s actually not very important. You don’t have to blow up a million rupees on cameras, even an entry level Canon 1000D (Rs 20K) can produce good shots. Professionals though would be well advised to use a body that has a frame rate of 6fps or higher. Better still invest in good and fast lenses. I have a personal bias towards Canon but Nikon equipment works just as well. Car photography is a bit of an adventure. You need to be able to shoot at any time of day (good light or bad light), any colour of car (black car when the sun is overhead, is an absolute nightmare) and most action shots are done while hanging out of the back of a hatchback while barrelling down a mountain road. Motion sickness? God help you. Also important is the ability to do post production work on the pictures, edit and amplify it in Photoshop or Lightroom. But most of all you need to be creative. This picture of the BMW 5 Series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class is one of my favourites. The entire shoot took all night, from 11pm to 6am, half the office lent a helping hand and then hours on Photoshop helped achieve the effect I wanted. It’s bloody hard work! We’re all lucky sods here at OVERDRIVE and though I don’t do any performance testing I get my kick out of photographing automobiles. For me it’s the best job in the world and over the next few pages I’ll try to give you an insight into the art and craft of automobile photography. Hopefully it will inspire you to go clicking - the rewards are very fulfilling, I assure you. SEP 2010 overdrive
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Into thin air A scooter ride to the top of the world. Dream or nightmare? Words Halley Prabhakar Photography Mohd Nasir
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ur photographer Nasir lay flat on his stomach, puking his guts out of the back the Mahindra Bolero he is using to shoot his story. I sat listlessly next to my Mahindra Rodeo that lay on its side, wheels spinning slowly. My breath comes in short, raspy bursts. Kshitij is supine as well, but he has managed to park his Duro properly before collapsing. He has been complaining of piercing headaches for the past two days and it looks like he’s passed out. You wouldn’t realise it in the state that we are in, but we’re rather thrilled with ourselves. We’ve done it. We’ve ridden two city-centric scooters 400km uphill in Kashmir during the monsoons over nonexistent roads. We may be gasping to fill our lungs with life-giving oxygen, but here under the much photographed Khardung La yellow sign board, we’re feeling truly on top of the world. At 18,380 feet above sea level, punching the air to celebrate takes too much energy, which none of us have right now. All this began roughly two weeks ago when Kshitij Sharma and I discovered that apart from working in the same office and professing a deep-seated love for cars and motorcycles, both of us love to cook as well. Which is to say that we have a lot in common. When the discussion turned to the kinds of rides OVERDRIVE has done in the past, I asked Kshitij if he’d be up for a ride? “Sure,” he beamed. I suggested we do something adventurous. He grasped my meaning instantly. “By adventurous, do you mean stupid?” At that point, the affable boy didn’t know what I was talking about. Even as he spoke we were preparing to hit the world’s highest motorable pass, Khardung La on automatic scooters from Mahindra Twowheelers. Hardened city slickers - us and the scooters - heading for the wild, as it were. Like all of our nuttiest stories, the intent was simple will the scooters manage it? These are among the most powerful fourstroke scooters in the country today and since this is Bullet country, we wanted to see if the scooters could take up the challenge. If along the way we got to road test the newest member of OVERDRIVE, no one would object, right? When I finally explained to him what he’d just signed up for, he gave me that I’ve lost my mind kind of stare. But he wasn’t even close. The longest Kshitij had ever ridden on a scooter in a go is 80km. And the highest point he’s been to is Lonavala. At least I had experience, even if none of it was in north India.
Day One The ride began in Srinagar. Which looked like a ghost town when we arrived because Srinagar was under curfew. We managed, after some serious effort and negotiations, to get a cab ride to the Mahindra TwoWheelers showroom.
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Nirvana trail Tracing the Buddhaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s path to enlightenment in the eco-friendly Prius Words Kshitij Sharma Photography Charles Pennefather
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og engulfs us as we drive down an unknown highway in the middle of the night. Fog in August? That can’t be right so we roll down the windows and are assaulted by the stench of burning dung cakes that villages scattered around the highway are using as fuel. The putrid smoke has fogged (and stenched) up the highway and I’m pretty sure is punching a sizeable hole in some layer of the atmosphere. Global warming? The greenies point to us driving cars and bikes as the main culprits, the tailpipe emissions being the reason why the environment is deteriorating at a rapid pace. But the car I’m driving is emitting precisely zero grams of carbon dioxide. It is burning absolutely no fuel. It is making absolutely no noise. And it’s probably worth more than all those villages scattered around the highway. Welcome to the world of the Prius. And welcome to Bihar. Bihar is as alien an environment as you’re ever going to put the Prius through. The Prius is the future of the automobile, what we all will probably be driving five or ten years from now, and environmental consciousness takes centre stage. Not in Bihar though. Five to ten years from now – actually we’re being thunderingly optimistic – this part of the country will probably start
getting introduced to car ownership. The day they start thinking of how their cars can mitigate damage to the environment is a few generations away. For now, I’m too scared to even stop to ease my bursting bladder in these dacoit-infested parts leading to Uttar Pradesh. Things were different in a bygone era. Pataliputra, modern day Patna was one of the oldest cities in the world, the capital of the great Maurya empire that stretched from Afganistan to Assam and from the Himalayas to the southern edge of the Deccan plateau. Bihar was home to the greatest Indian minds – poets like Tulsidas, Kalidas, scholars like Vatsyayana, Chanakya, Aryabhatta (who invented zero and Pii), home to the first university in the world (Nalanda), home of the great kings – Ashoka, Samudragupta, Sher Shah Suri and where Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. Our mission is to retrace Buddha’s epic journey in a car that’s as close to the principles of Buddhism as is possible with the internal combustion engine - the Toyota Prius. It was launched at a time mankind couldn’t be bothered about the environment in his quest of bigger engines and higher performance. Saving the environment wasn’t yet on the radar but like Siddhartha aka Buddha who gave up his princely life in search for the truth, Toyota invested resources in making a car
PRIUS ON SPIRITUAL
that would strike a balance; be clean and efficient. The result was the Prius, the world’s first mass produced hybrid. Such was Toyota’s commitment to preserve the environment that the first generation Prius was sold at a loss but now it has established itself as an icon. In the 13 years since its launch the Prius has undergone numerous upgradations and now gets a state-of-the-art 1.8-litre inline four-cylinder petrol engine mated to a 60kW motor. That means there is now adequate performance to make it quick enough to rush through the bad lands of Bihar while also being efficient enough to not require tanking up and sampling just how adulterated fuel can get in these parts. Details of the Toyota’s engineering brilliance will probably take up more space than what’s available but the most striking aspect is what Toyota calls the Hybrid Synergy Drive. It allows the car to run solely on the electric motor while starting off and at speeds below 30kmph and the single planetary gear helps in regulating the battery to avoid any wastage of power. Which is how we found ourselves pottering silently through these parts, heading for Bodhgaya where Siddhartha attained enlightenment.
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Dual fun
Getting a taste of Honda’s automatic VFR1200F in India Words Abhay Verma Photography Aditya Bedre
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o you really think we need an automatic transmission on a sport tourer? I certainly didn’t and so my first reaction when Honda launched its VFR1200F internationally was negative. I could easily imagine the VFR fitting into India but I couldn’t imagine the automatic doing the same. The looks didn’t help either. Earlier VFRs were lithe and revered for their ability to balance sporty character and touring comfort without looking bulky or ugly. The VFR1200F’s styling package looked futuristic but not really pretty so that wasn’t adding to my confidence either. I was hoping that when I finally got to ride the bike, it would be good enough to settle my doubts. Then Vikram went off to Japan on Honda’s invitation to sample the bike. He returned full of praise for the bike’s ability and for the new fangled dual-clutch transmission. He said that Honda was planning to launch the bike in India shortly at prices even higher than the Fireblade’s and the CB1000R’s. Now
the VFR looked very interesting indeed. Last month I was in Chennai for the national motorcycle racing championship, and the Monday after the races was the bike launch. Honda did everything it could to keep the actual model name under wraps, but I don’t think anyone was surprised to find that the motorcycle was the VFR1200F. Honda, being typically careful, chose to make us ride seven familiarisation laps on 9, 11 and 17PS motorcycles before letting us ride the VFRs. I didn’t get the point, but I guess we’ll jump all manner of hoops to get to the saddle. But before we ride off, there’s the styling to discuss, no? The VFR’s styling has been a discussion topic since the first concept came out at Intermot 2008 in Cologne. Shumi was there and he said that the tongues were wagging from the official unveiling onwards. For everyone who liked it, there seemed to be two who didn’t. In the flesh the huge fairing and the tall windscreen clearly mark it out as a tourer, but it isn’t pretty. It’s big. It’s got some nice details though, like the
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V 1 2 E ng ine
Mighty heart The v12 engine and its hallowed niche in automotive history Words Kshitij Sharma
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love V12 engines. I love them so much that I’d give them a hug at redline if I possibly could. But the problem with writing about something you love so deeply is that it’s a tightrope walk. If you don’t get it right, you can only blame yourself, and it’s a long way down to fall. The V12 engine is why I first got into cars. I think it’s just beautiful. The first V12 appeared in 1916 in the Packard Twin-Six. The name explains exactly what a V12 is. It’s a joining at the crank of two inline 6-cylinder engines. Sort of like conjoined twins. The beauty of the V12 lies in the fact that it’s comprises two inline sixes, and these are among the smoothest engines by configuration thanks to their perfect primary and secondary balance. Put two together, and even more combustion events are compressed into the same crank cycle, stabilising the torque flow further and creating still greater smoothness. So much so that when the included angles of the V12 are
45°, 60°, 120°, or 180° you won’t need any artificial smootheners like a heavier crank or a counterbalancer. Which means you can make components lighter for performance or let the engine work less hard to make the same power. If you’re wondering why, in that case, doesn’t everyone switch to V12s? The answer is simple. They were the default solution when creating power from an engine was expensive. Big engines and lots of cylinders were the commonest form of motive power. Those days are gone. V12s were never inexpensive and the menial work, as it were, is now the preserve of lesser engines.
12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
V12 PARTY
Above: Aston’s most ambitious car yet, the million pound One-77 Below: Lamborghini Miura, the car that marked the dawn of midengined supercars
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Dr i v e
2011 Rang e rov e r
Range royal The 40th anniversary of the King of SUVs is marked by the final version of the Series 3 Range Rover, the 2011 TDV8 diesel Words Ray Hutton
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n November 2001, I watched the unveiling of the current Range Rover at the London Design Museum with Spen King, the engineer who had devised the first Range Rover 31 years before. Wolfgang Reitzle, then the president of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, explained that this third-generation Range Rover was a £1 billion project. Spen was astonished and whispered that the original was developed with no budget at all, just in the engineers’ spare time, and that he had to convince the Rover management that such a vehicle might find a few customers. Fast-track to 2010 and a luxury ‘eco’ hotel in the Douro region of Portugal. Spen King was supposed to be there to celebrate the 40th anniversary of what is now universally regarded as the King of SUVs. But just a few days before the event, the ever youthful 85year-old died of a heart attack after he had been knocked off his bike by a van. So one of the few continuous threads in the Range Rover story has gone. Those of us who knew and admired Spen drank a silent toast in his memory.
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The Range Rover has survived a series of company unheavals. When it began, Rover was joined with Standard-Triumph and had Land Rover as a profitable side-line. It became part of British Leyland, then, successively, Leyland Cars, Jaguar Rover Triumph, BL, and the Rover Group until finally, in 1994 the company was taken over by BMW. Six years later, BMW pulled out and sold Land Rover to Ford but only after it had committed that £1 billion for the new Range Rover. Today, of course, Land Rover is, with Jaguar, a subsidiary of Tata Motors. The 40th anniversary coincided with the introduction of what is likely to be the final version of the Series 3 Range Rover – the 2011 TDV8 diesel. By the time its lighter, aluminium-hulled successor arrives, this model will be 12 years old. That is a long life for a model these days but the original Range Rover lasted much longer; it was produced for 25 years. The operation in Portugal gave the chance to re-visit that original model, in fact, to drive one of the pre-production cars that was used for the 1970 press launch in Cornwall.
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O D G o es Rac i ng !
Get your race face on
Team OVERDRIVE is bitten by the motorsport bug and we go rallying, co-driving, racing and bike racing. And, oh, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a podium or trophy in sight
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12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
OD GOES RACING!
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F e at u r e
ral ly af fairs
After the highs come the lows Nashik was a dream debut for Sirish but all the euphoria came crashing down at the second round in Coimbatore Words Sirish Chandran Photography Aditya Bedre, Kishen Nanjappa
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ife sucks. Nothing goes your way. Lady Luck abandons you like you have the plague. Everything that could possibly fall apart, falls apart. And when you think it can’t get any worse – it does. That was Coimbatore, round two of the 2010 Speed INRC, my debut dirt rally, quite possibly the most frustrating, morale crushing, character testing two days of my life. And it all began so well… If you remember my debut rally at Nashik last month was rather nerve wracking. I went in with exactly zero kilometres in testing, my helmets and suit arrived a few hours before the start of the event, I
had zero experience of the car or the Yoko rally rubber but despite it all I had a dream run, finishing on the podium, on debut. A high of such highs I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Of course Coimbatore was going to be a lot tougher. You see, I’ve been testing cars and bikes for over ten years now, pushing them to their limits on tarmac and it has all made me a reasonably quick driver. Tarmac may be unforgiving but it is an environment I’m familiar with. Dirt? That’s totally new. The only experience I have on dirt is getting the car dramatically sideways for some drifting shots. How to push hard and fast on dirt, clock a time, the technique, everything was alien to me. So we did the sensible thing, went to Coimbatore
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RAL LY CAL LS
Call centre My co-driving experiences so far in the 2010 Speed INRC Words Halley Prabhakar Photography Kishen Nanjappa, Aditya Bedre
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icky Grist is screaming at full volume, 50, 6 right tightens on to short straight, caution slushy 30, hairpin right on to flying finish as I wrestle Colin McRae’s Ford Focus RS WRC to a new record stage time on a special stage in Kenya. The car’s bent from all corners but now it’s up to Tommi Mäkinen to beat my time in his Lancer WRC. Game on! Alright, before you think I’ve lost it I’m nowhere near Africa. I’m in my bedroom playing a WRC game on my PC, back when I was in short pants. The WRC game was my life and that’s how I got introduced to the world of rallying.
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The last few years I watched a few rallies, met many rally drivers and like every petrolhead longed to take part in a rally. Except like every petrolhead I lacked that one crucial ingredient – a budget. And then things fell into my lap. Helping Sirish out on a rally test I bumped into Aniruddha Rangnekar who was set to make his debut in this year’s Speed INRC and was trying to teach some girlfriend of his how to navigate. Poor thing was white as a sheet with his driving and as things panned out he asked me whether I would be interested in co-driving for him. I had no experience and don’t really enjoy sitting next to the driver but opportunities like this don’t come every day. Now co-driving is the non-glamorous part of rallying. The drivers are always the
heroes, get written about, have girls falling into their laps. But behind the scenes the codriver is as important – stage times depend not just on the driver’s pace but on how good the co-driver’s calls are, how the two gel in the car and the sheer quality of pace notes. So here I am, on the other side of the fence, making my debut at Nashik at round 1 of the 2010 Speed INRC. The first thing a co-driver does when he gets to a rally is the documentation and paper work, while the driver goes to check up on the car and hang with his mates. The co-driver also ensures all the licenses are acquired prior to the rally and there are no last minute hassles. Usually the Wednesday or Thursday prior to the rally are the days for the recce.
That’s where we come in. Co-drivers are widely known as navigators and that is exactly what they do – guide the drivers to the stages and most of them need it because they have no sense of direction. All competitors are given road books which direct us to the stages. The books have a tulip to help in navigating to the stages. It is a pictorial representation of the route where every junction is marked out. The route we use to get to the stages is called the transport stage and in the rally we are given a maximum time in which to complete the transport stage (while adhering to all speed limits and laws). In the recce we drive along the stages (at legal speeds) making a note of each and every corner, bump and obstacle. As An-
iruddha drives the stage he calls out the distances to the corners, the degree of the corner, whether there is a crest or bump, if he can cut the corner, if there are stones and it is dangerous to cut the corner and so on. The more descriptive the notes, the better it is during the rally. With a pillow on my lap to cushion the bumps I write down all of this in shorthand. On the second run of the stages (only two recce runs are allowed) I call out the notes (again we drive at legal speeds, always careful of oncoming traffic) and Aniruddha checks if it is accurate and he is comfortable with the calls. Usually a lot of changes are made on the second run. A typical ‘call’ I would give the driver would be: 100, 4 right into 5 left, don’t cut, over crest, caution 6 left. I write it down as
F e at u r e
a ral ly for eve ry mont h
In rally heaven My dream about what a year of rallying should all be about Words Martin Holmes
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welve, the number of months in the year. Rallying is a sport which happens around the calendar without a break. And in these days when the whole future format of the sport is under review, this is a story about an ideal. It is a series of thoughts about how rallies fit in so well with the 12-month annual calendar, as each classic rally in the calendar, past as well as present, identifies themselves with a specific month of the year. In many ways this is my dream about what a year of rallying should all be about.
12th ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
DREAM RALLY
CALENDAR
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motorsport F1 NEWS MOTOGP WRC INDIAN
Rule the roost The Red Roosters steal the show in Coimbatore Words Halley Prabhakar Photography Aditya Bedre, Kishen Nanjappa
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Gill’s streak of ill luck continued in Coimbatore as a broken ball joint saw him crash out and miss the rest of the stages on day 1
t the end of day 1 Naren Kumar (co-driver Ram Kumar) was all smiles after posting the fastest times on all seven stages in his Group N+ Cedia. After a disappointing run in Nashik, Naren was all set to make it to the top of the podium. Even after driving well in Coimbatore’s demanding gravel stages Team MRF’s Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) was behind Naren by 25 seconds after the end of just the third stage. Gill’s streak of ill luck continued as a broken ball joint saw him crash out and miss out on the rest of the
stages on day 1. Meanwhile Vikram Mathias (co-driver PVS Murthy) of Red Rooster Racing was running close behind Gill and was pushed up to second position. Naren Kumar by now had taken a lead of more than two minutes over his team-mate Vikram Mathias. Last year’s winner of the INRC Rally of Coimbatore and Red Rooster driver Amittrajit Ghosh (co-driver Ashwin Naik) was in a strong third position at the end of the seventh stage but suffered an alternator failure in the transport section and couldn’t make it to the service park in time. This let Team MRF’s Arjun Balu (co-driver Sujith Kumar)
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Volvo 9 4 00
Bus driver for a day Volvo’s original success story, the 12-metre B7R – driven! Words and photography Charles Pennefather
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nce upon a time, a bus journey meant a rattling, noisy ride equivalent to al fresco motoring, given the amount of insulation you had from the elements. If it was hot you stewed in your own sweat, if it rained you got wet. Asthmatic engines meant it took forever to get up a ghat and time was made up on the
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downhill sections by the driver careening through each bend on the limit of adhesion (aided of course by the brakes offering not very much in the way of retardation). Bus travel needed a strong heart, enough balance to make a member of the Russian ballet proud, and an in-depth knowledge of holy texts. And then came Volvo’s buses with the engine in the wrong place, air-conditioning
that not only worked to keep passengers cool but also, shock of shocks, cooled the driver as well and with the magic-like air suspension that was unheard of before. It has been twelve years since Volvo buses signed on its first employee in India (it’s just as old as OVERDRIVE!) and we’ve driven the 12-metre long Volvo 9400 that has made Volvo buses the force that it is today.
bootlid similar vehicle in your garage? write to us at editorial@overdrive.co.in
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Car buyers guide
me rce des e cl ass f l ee t i nt ro duct i o n
Happy daze
The fun quotient has been ramped up in this new Merc
Mileage 23,654km Date acquired July ‘10
Merc E-Classes have always held a fond place in my heart. In my formative years my dream car was a W124 Series E-Class, I think it was every petrolhead’s dream car then. I remember when the first batch of E-Classes came to Pune, one of the cars got damaged in a stone pelting incident and that car was sent to my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) dad’s garage to replace the windscreen and touch up the paintwork. As you’d expect we all trooped off to have our
first look at the Indian E (I still remember it had a totally crappy stereo and JK tyres) and we all swore we’d buy E-Classes when we got into serious money. The W210 ovaleyed E-Class was also the first really expensive car I drove at OVERDRIVE, two months into the job. I remember sitting in the parking lot and counting the sheer number of buttons on the fascia and prodding and poking every one of them. I was utterly smitten.
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Gear & Gadgets To p - n o t c h t o y s f o r t h e m o s t d i s c r i m i n at i n g t a s t e s
12 greatest driving watches
Tag Heuer Monaco Famous for being the first automatic and the first square cased chronograph
Audi Chronoswiss Centennial
Made to celebrate 100 years of Audi and based on the dial of the Regulateur
Breitling Supersport
Features a self-winding chronograph movement along with a central 60-minute counter
Omega Speedmaster
A manual winding chronograph that was also selected by NASA for the Apollo Program
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Parimigiani Fleurier Bugatti Type 370 Arranged like a transverse engine, it is one of the most exclusive watches for auto enthusiasts
BRM England watch
Available in 38mm and 44mm sizes with the Union Jack dial and water resistant up to 100 metres
Rolex Daytona
One of the oldest driving watches, a collectors watch now in its second series
Cabestan Scuderia One
Only 60 will be made with 30 in black and red and the remaining in black and yellow
Chopard 1000 Mille Miglia
Made of stainless steel coated with black carbon, with a cool Dunlop Design rubber strap
Aston Martin Rapide Jaeger-Le Coultre Transponder
Cool like Bond. Just press the open button to unlock your Rapide
Oris Raid Chronograph
Clean and simple dial with the red zones mirroring the danger zone of a rev counter
Hublot F1 King Power
Sports ceramic bezel and the strap uses material used in F1 racing suits
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