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Monday, October 22, 2012

My Experiences with Nano LX - Part 8

Bangalore-Kulithalai-Bangalore:
On 24-Feb-12, I started my journey to Kulithalai( near Trichy) from Bangalore in my chariot(Nano). The second long drive of the month. As usual I started by 8 pm, reached Krishnagiri A2b Restaurant at 10 pm. (40 km on state highway and 30 km on NH). After 1 hour break, I started from there. Listening to songs,enjoying the fresh air, I kept continous clocking of 70-90kmph.
Often , I touched 100kmph mark. But controlled myself to be in safe bet of 90kmph. Many Volvo buses of KPN,ABT,KSRTC are overtaking at high speed. I overtook them as well quite a few number of times. Whenever a KPN bus is behind me, I hardly give them way, but for others, I leave them to go. I drove on par with many Santro's , I10's,Swift's. My friend was watching all this with surprise,because this wont happen always.

The 160km stretch from Krishnagiri A2B to Salem was covered in a mere 2 hrs 30 mins with a 10 min break in between. My friend's surprise got bigger for every drive with the way Nano performed. Durability was excellent.No wonder that Tatas had filed 37 patents for Nano design. Light weight vehicle with nice reliablity,mileage,durablity,manuvouerblity. All at a much better price in the hatch back segment.

From Namakkal, I had to go in Statehighway for a 50km distance, which I covered in 45 minutes. There were many Trucks passing by, mostly heavy trucks and sand carriers. The quality of headlights is amazing in Nano, much better than those in the hatch back category.

Many people feel that the ordinary steering and drum brakes are negatives of Nano. For a car , weighing just 630kg, disc brakes or ABS is not required at all, drum brakes are more than suffiicient to give the required braking. On the ordinary steering, it is sufficient for the light weight design, if a power steering is used, it will tilt the vehicle due to the centrifugal force and the light weight design, which people do not understand. Even if those are given, the price will get increased, again that will become another negative.

Many people think they are smart enough and ask for the above. Its like asking for a bluetooth head and a memory card to use with a Nokia 1100. When the design is made fool proof and the sufficient features are given, people expect for more than what is required because those features are available in some other cars.

I covered 275km in 6 hours with almost 1 hr 15 min break in between. Wont this be sufficient for a car whose worth is 2.25 lakhs?

The return journey is almost the same as well. Started at 8pm from Kulithalai, reached Salem at 10 pm. The stretch was 100 km , but there was good amount of traffic in the state highway till Namakkal. I was to pick up my friend at Salem. There we took a 30 min break and then started our journey. Once reaching Dharmapuri, we went for another 30 min break because of our tiredness, due to attending functions.

Again at Krishnagiri, we went for a 15 min break, then we travelled at a good speed. After reaching Bangalore, we took the city route instead of the state highway because of midnight travel. We reached finally at 2 am at Whitefield. This added to the surprises of my colleagues and they kept asking more and more about the performance.

The performance it is giving made them feel good. They felt Nano is a worth buy.

More to be continued..................................