April 7th, 2011
admin
Scooters For Sale Australia Make your riding most comfortable with safe & price assured Scooters For Sale Australia. Our interest free finances on all bikes and scooters plus dedicated after sale services make us the web’s leader of Scooters For Sale Australia.
If you need to make a car really attractive – I mean really stinking hot – low is the way to go, Marcello Gandini, designer of the fabulous Lamborghini Countach, knew this. American hot rodders who ‘slam’ or lower their cars are aware of this trick. And now so are Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen. Both these German companies have spared no effort in adding considerable sex appeal to their volume-selling saloons by making low-slung, coupe-like avatars of the same.
Under the skin of this car, as the name suggests, is a Passat. All the mechanical bits are the same: the chassis, the suspension bits, the gearboxes and the engines. Mercedes pioneered this fourdoor coupe trend with the ClS, built on the popular E-Class platform, and the Passat CC is Volkswagens take on the same theme. Volkswagen’s has been slightly more honest than Mercedes by calling the car a Passat, but the ‘CC’ part is slightly confusing. That suffix normally suggests a coupe-cabriolet with a folding metal roof – not accurate in this case.
Read more »
April 6th, 2011
admin
The all-new City, fiesta, SX4 and Verna aim to offer both. But which one stands out?
For the past 10 years, the Honda City has been the king of the mid-size segment. Challengers have come and gone but none have truly managed to snatch the City’s crown. The SX4 on the strength of its sheer value pipped the previous city in our comparison test (June 2007), while the Verna and Fiesta with their own suite of strengths haven’t been pushovers either. However, despite strong attempts from rivals, the City’s popularity has never been in doubt. Honda has moved the goalposts once again with the new City which, now in its third avatar, is dramatically different and better than before. But it is significantly more expensive too, which means it will have to be that much better to trounce its rivals. So is it really that good? Read more »
April 5th, 2011
admin
The first real jaguar was also one of the first post-war supercars. A favourite with royalty in India, the XK120 is also the car that helped build jaguar.
This is a car I have been itching to drive since I was sixteen. Not any Jaguar XK120, but this particular car, BMU 1259, the car you see on this page. At the time, of course it was impossible. Not only did I not have a license, the car itself lay in a barn in Aundh, near Satara in Maharashtra. In no condition to be driven, the car was in desperate need of restoration. But that didn’t prevent my friend Baba and me from dreaming. The car belonged to his father, the erstwhile ruler or Pratinidhi of Aundh, and hadn’t muved for many years. We planned who would restore the body, which workshop we would get the straight six overhauled in, which Jaguar specialist would supply us parts from the UK and most importantly where we would drive it after the work was done. But that dream came to an abrupt end as my friend tragically lost his life on a Yamaha V-Max. Read more »
March 31st, 2011
admin
Jaguar-Land Rover hangs like a millstone around Tata Motor’s neck. The balance sheets of these British brands are awash with red ink and with no financial help form the British government forthcoming, the Tata Group may have to sell its family jewels to bail out what it saw as a prized piece of the industry not even a year ago. With domestic sales having gone pear-shaped, Tata Motor could well do without the gigantic drag of jaguar-Land Rover. However, as they say, hindsight is 20/20 vision and not many could have imagined this unprecedented meltdown of economies that is crippling the world. This global recession has even caught out Ratan Tata, a visionary who always dared to dream and usually came out the better for it. So what made Tata pay US$ 2.3 billion to previous owner Ford, for these two icons which may be worth half that amount days? Global ambition, the chance to catapult Tata motors onto the world stage and the opportunity to own two icons of the automotive world are the obvious reasons. But the less obvious ones are those that the outside world wasn’t privy to at the time of sale.
What tempted Tata (and early bidder Mahindra too) was a raft of exciting models Ford spend many years and billions developing, which were reaching fruitions. These models had the potential to change the company’s tumultuous history and put it on the road to prosperity. Read more »
March 21st, 2011
admin
With 200bhp at the front wheels, it’s not too difficult to explain how there is wheelspin in second gear. This is not your ordinary luxury Lancer. This monster has been poked with rods, tortured in a garage and has had its organs flown in form various parts of the world to make it what it is now. Engine, turbo and even the ECU have been tweaked and tuned to get the extra edge.
The owner is, according to his elderly neighbour, far from sane. For Prasad Divadkar, no amount of money is too much to ensure that his car goes that much quicker. From the time you get off the clutch it’s clear that it is more than regular Lancer-quick. Still, It’s not really evident till you get past 5000rpm when the Garret GT25R Turbo kicks in. That’s when everything goes out of whack. It feels like everything around you has suddenly gotten a whole lot slower. Bhoom! Once the wheelspin stops, your head is pushed back into the headrest. It’s absolutely mental, the Apexl exhaust screams away to glory just begging you to keep going.
Read more »
March 17th, 2011
admin
A minor facelift and an interior upgrade fresh up the big Merc.
Here’s a quick refresher in M-classification. The original Mercedes ML, the W163, launched in 1997, was criticised from the start for crude on-road behaviour and a low-rent interior that made it sit uneasily with the three-pointed star’s status. Still, it found enough buyers around the world to keep it in production for nine years.
Mercedes responded in 2006 with the W164, which is longer and wider than the outgoing M-class. Significantly, it was built on a steel monocoque chassis rather than the body-on-ladder frame of the earlier car. It’s been on sale in India since 2007.
The car you see here is the new W164. it’s not all new. Changes are restricted to a minor facelift and an update of the interiors. Restyled headlights, a more aggressive chin, a bigger lower grille and rectangular exhaust pipe exits are part of the facelift. Minor as these changes are, they instantly make the earlier car look a generation old and this is something Mercedes-Benz is very good at doing. Just look at any of the E-class’s facelifts for proof.
With the ML, the designers have created an aggressive-looking car, with dramatically cut wheel arches protruding from the body and a recessed area between the wheels, not unlike that of an X5’s. There are also AMG-style vents on top of the bonnet, a lightly re-styled bumper, along with more traditional off-roader cues such as in imitation sumpguard and sills. Overall, the effect is extremely positive. It’s also got a very slippery shape (for an SUV) – the drag coefficient is 0.34, making it easier for the 2987cc V6 diesel to push the ML to its 215kph top speed. Read more »
March 17th, 2011
admin
From the moment the i20 was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show last year, it was clear that Hyundai’s new supermini was intended more for customers in Stuttgart and London than those in Surat and Ludhiana. This new Hyundai has been designed and developed for Europe where it aims to battle with established rivals like the VW Polo, Ford Fiesta and Opel Corsa. But since the i20 is made only in India, it’s almost impolite not to sell it in the domestic market as well.
Hyundai launched the i20 in India a few months after its global debut but what we get is the base 1.2 Kappa model to take advantage of the huge tax benefits for cars shorter than four metres and with engine smaller than 1200cc. A 1.4 petrol and 1.4 CRDi diesel option will be available at a later stage. So how good is this made-for-Europe hatch? Does it suit Indian tastes and can it establish the Hyundai brand in the small but critical premium hatchback segment? Read our full road test to find out. Read more »
March 17th, 2011
admin
It’s been a relatively short but hard march for Tata Motors in the car business. At times the learning curve has been steep and progress has been slow. But of late things are looking up and every car Tata has launched in recent years has been a significant step forward. The Vista, launched just a year ago, was a quantum improvement over any other car Tata ever made. That makes it a good starting point for the Indigo Manza, the saloon version built on the same platform. With its Fiat power train, massive cabin space and typically aggressive Tata pricing, the Manza has a lot going for it. But for it to succeed, the car has to do much more and not just quantitatively. Saloon buyers are more demanding than those happy with hatchbacks. Comfort, quality, performance and features are important in this segment to take on champs like the Swift Dzire. So just how compelling is the new and fully-loaded Tata saloon? Read more »
March 8th, 2011
admin
Need a change in lifestyle? Bored of that saloon? The new Tata Xenon is a pick-up aimed at car buyers.
BACK IN THE late1980s, Tata Motors’ tough-as-old-boots Tatamobile was one of rural India’s workhorses, conquering dirt tracks from Bombay to Bihar. Then in 2005, Tata tried turning the old workhorse into a racehorse with the 90bhp TL. It wasn’t’ much of a racehorse.
Tata now hopes to rekindle some of the old Tatamobile’s go-anywhere appeal with this Xenon, a lifestyle off-roader targeted at the weekend warrior adventure crowd.
It is a long way from its humble origins as the Tatamobile. It’s got muscular flanks, a 140bhp, 2.2-litre DiCOR engine from the Tata Safari, and an image that wants nothing to do with the doodhwala. Read more »
March 8th, 2011
admin
New interiors, fresher looks, more power and an automatic gearbox for the Hyundai Sonata should always have been?
The name should have been Hyundai Sonata Evolve, because an evolution of the Embera is what this car is. The suspension, chassis and the seats are identical to the Embera and while the engine are the same, they get bit more power. The main changes to the Sonata Transform (the Embera name has been discontinued) are the ones that address the weaknesses of the earlier car, namely, the interiors. To complete the update, Hyundai has given the Sonata a nip and truck of the exteriors as well.
You’ll recognise it for a Sonata, but you’ll notice it has bigger headlamps, a bigger front grille, a new chin and new alloys. The sides and the rear look the same though. These changes have made the Sonata look a bit more grown up. Read more »
