Heyloz :), currently I am in a car-buying mode so it only made "bizness sense" to put a post on it, what else is me w/o a blog-post afterall :P. So, as it is, I currently have my Dad's Indica as I have told you previously, but there is a need for a 2nd car in my home at Patna - so this time I decided to put my foot down and buy a car for myself and send the trucky Indica back to PAT.

Soo, as it happens, I have an ossum belief in my driving skills and more-so in my parking skills (current statistics indicate I usually decide to not park my Indica in places where the parking area is smaller than 3 Indica-lengths :P, trust me its not about my ability at allz, its my vanity :P). Hence, my choice was automatically limited to the small-car segment, and at best, hatchbacks. So, I did my customary car-buyer SWOT analysis -- Alto was cheap for my vanity, Santro's spares are too costly, Wagon-R was too boxy, Zen Estillo was gayish and then there was this remodelled kid on the block - GM Spark - the remodelled Matiz. So, me being enthu and all went for the test-drive with Dad for the moral support - and it was shocking !! Apart from the overall plasticky feeling (and the steering wheel feeling like a videogame car joystick after the royal Indica experience) - spellbound was the last word on my mind - and then there was the small matter of the speedometer and other dials being bang in the middle of the frontboard - as if Spark was supposed to be driven by a driver while the owner keeps looking at the speed for controlling purposes - I had this vision of my head getting permanantly craned in its socket by trying to follow the speedometer. And, then I had the temerity to ask this question to the salesman - Why kill the beautifully efficient Matiz by doing this hogshit (something like consultants adding useless value just for value-sakes :P) - please follow the conversation diligently, it borders on inanity :

Mez : Sir, so why are all the dials bang in the middle of the car frontboard ?
Salesman : Sir, aajkal toh log shirt bhi ulti pehente hain !
Mez (changing tack) : So, why haven't you introduced this uber-cool feature in your higher models ?
Salesman (ignoring my stupidly tacky question) : From research, it has been found that 70% of the car accidents happen on the right-hand side of the car, which can be attributed to the driver focussing on the dials more than the road (I was almost feeling like my clients :P), and hence the speedometer has been shifted to the middle.

[Needless to say, spellbound by these pearls of wisdom, I zipped my trap shut killing the obvious question in my gut - What about the driver now focussing on the center of the frontboard ?- and exercised the only choice I had in the matter - not spend my money :D].

So, now yours' truly's attentions shifted to the hatchback segment - namely Hyundai Getz Prime, Chevy (again !) Aveo U-VA, Maruti Swift and an outside choice of Fiat Palio Stile. Now eliminating Stile was easy - Fiat has changed the model 3 times in the past year - there is no guarantee, you would not feel obsolete even within 1 day of your buying it ! Next up was Swift - now its a wonderful machine, but almost everybody in Gurgaon has it - so my vanity dismissed it with a shrug, sorry but that's me :-). Now, UV-A is a great car - I test-drove it but it had stiff competition from Getz - a very good-looking car - but here was the downer, its steering wheel is too low and I had to almost drive it like looking down, so now the final winner was UV-A incredibly :-) and the final nail was my dad's approval - you see he is a pakka Bihari - one who buys the best value for his money. So, that having been said, I would soon be the proud owner of a UV-A on the eve of GM's 100 years in the automotive industry.

But, the crux of this post is not my proud ownership - but, the fact that GM has announced a Rs. 50 k discount on Spark (putting it in the same bracket as Alto) supposedly, as a part of its 100 year celebrations - my only contention is how much will they pay for their uber-cool technical stupidity :) ?

Enjoy the 6th ODI :).
Ranjan