This Week's Driving - July 24th, 2000 - Log 27

Regular visitors to cybersteering would have noticed that we have started carrying advertisements from automobile manufacturers, scattered here and there. Please rest assured, these have been put up free, without any payments in cash, kind or any other sort of favour accepted from them or their agencies. Editorial policies shall be as direct and blunt as they always were, fearless and free as before.

In fact, more than one ad agency has wondered how we plan to sustain this site without revenue from advertisements? The truth is very simple. But it is also our business model. As of now, therefore, let us keep it at that. Cybersteering is your site, rated as number one at google on "Indian cars" and that is saying everything.

Queries from people about how automobile magazines or "motoring journalists" go about giving titles to automobiles have thrown up some interesting sidelights which, frankly, even we were not aware of in the past. The recent publicity given to the cricket match fixing controversies, which at the end of the day pertain to at most a few hundred crores worth of money, will give you an idea. The lack of any real customer support, to give you an example, in the case of yet unpaid booking amounts from Peugeot and Fiat will give you another idea.

Not that we don't know all the manufacturers. Matter of fact, we probably get more direct e-mail contact from the really senior people there than do, maybe, their own PR or media-relations people. But simple fact is that we meet across the table as equals, not as supplicants. Be it a free paid holiday worldwide in the guise of an educational trip or seeking ads, we at cybersteering are not obliged to any of them. Is that, however, important?

Look at it this way:- The new automobile industry in India alone is worth over Rs 40,000 crores. per annum. Add to that oils and lubricants, services like insurance, resales and you have, easily, the largest single business segment in the country. Growing rapidly. The stakes are obviously way, way, sky-high. A few inches of edit space in such situations becomes worth acres of paid ad space.

Figured out why everybody wants to start an automobile print publication, then? Not saying that this applies to all of them. But as new filters in that yet one more automobile magazine, backed by Germans in this case, is about to be launched, one wonders.

News has reached us that Honda are about to launch a new car in India, for which they've called us to the pre-launch test ride at Ahmednagar. They say, " it is our pleasure to invite you to a special media test drive session we are organising at ahmednagar, Pune, between 9th and 10th August 2000, for a new Honda car powered with the revolutionary VTEC engine, slated to be launched in India shortly".

Our reply was . . .
To: A.M. Gupta, esq.,
General Manager ? Marketing,
HONDA SieL Cars India Ltd., NOIDA, U.P.

Dear Mr. Gupta,
This is with reference to your letter dated the 20th of July 2000 inviting me to test drive at Ahmednagar, near Pune, the new Honda car to be powered by the VTEC engine.

I accept your offer, and wish to advise you that I shall make my own arrangements for travel, board and lodging at and upto Ahmednagar and Pune. Please keep me informed of the exact dates and schedules. I would like to bring 3 more people along at our own complete cost and expense, if that is fine by you. Their names are : Shailesh Khanolkar / webmaster-cybersteering.com, Dilip Bam / bikeguru-cybersteering.com and Prakash Alimchandani / MUVguru-cybersteering.com. I, ofcourse, am now known as autoguru-cybersteering.com.

I have always wondered why your company has chosen to ignore me in the past, maybe we can discuss that issue this time.

Yours sincerely, Veeresh Malik, for cybersteering.com and lakhs of Indian automobile users.

We will keep all of you briefed.

Road safety takes on an all new meaning, as explained vividly by our very own bike-guru, Dilip Bam the one and only. After the incident of his hole in one, when he managed to get an ear neatly slided off thanks to the bikini fairing of the Hero Honda CeeBeeZee under test with him a few hundred metres from his own home, we've realised what it means when somebody says "I would rather have a hole in my head than not wear a helmet".

Choosing to not wear a helmet in heads-free Pune, because all he was doing was "riding round the corner" to buy some essentials, Dilip (he shall tell us the gory details himself, soon) fell off his bike at very low speed and, simply, clean lost his right ear completely.

Along with this I hear a story about a friend of mine who smashed into a buffalo while driving at high speed in a Maruti Esteem on a dark and rainy night. I went to see what was left of the Esteem. Said friend, however, walked away unheart from the accident because (a) he was wearing his seat-belt, (b) being a Sikh, he had his turban on and that cushioned whatever else had to be taken.

Please, everybody, please wear your helmets, use your seat-belts. I've started to, again. So should you.

Dropping car sales have got the manufacturers worried again, it would see. One unfortunate fall-out of this complete scene is the extreme difficulty people face while moving automobiles around from one part of the country to another. Re-registration or transfer of motor vehicles from one state to the other has apparently become a major disaster zone exercise, with all sorts of rules and regulations not found anywhere in the Motor Vehicles Act being thrown about and interpreted with gay abandon by anybody and everybody. Often in the name of "environment" but actually for the benefit of somebody's personal chairty.

Is it environmentally more degrading to use existing resources with frugality or do we have to be forced into buying new products with no technology benefit?

Aviation Minister says there is no problem with using 20 or 25 year old aircraft. Maintenance of these aircraft is done under strictest of terms and conditions and supervision. Wonder if anybody could draw a comparision with old motor vehicles belonging to the Government? Has anybody wondered why government vehicles are usually so maintained that they have to be replaced every few years?

And then they want us to fly in the same old ancient aircraft? Would the Aviation Minister travel to work in a 20 year old car?

We have received a letter from a reader asking about more details on Daewo Cielo cars catching fire spontaneously. This was a subject of interest and some reseacrh a few years ago. Anybody got any information on this to share, this burning topic of the day? Write in . . .

Drivers Log
Veeresh Malik
The Edit Team
bluepencil@cybersteering.com

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