172kmph

Last time I wrote about 151kmph in my Palio on NH4, I had promised myself I was going to take the car on the express-way some day. The revv-happy car begged for a high revv, high adrenaline drive on the wiiiide and loooooong empty stretches on probably the best road in Maharashtra.

I didn't get an opportunity till March-2011 though. Every time I took the car on express-way before March, every time I had some or the other issues in taking the car all the way up on gas. Sometimes it was dark on the expressway, sometimes there was just too much traffic to allow for the risk, and sometimes it was the age of people in the car that prevented me from even thinking about it.

Then came March 8, 2011. I had bought a 21" Wacom Cintiq pressure sensitive tablet from a friend in Goregaon Film-city, and since he was leaving Mumbai in couple of days since, I thought of a plan to make a dash for Mumbai early in the morning, and get back to Pune before office hours. It was a wicked plan, but if successful, it would allow me absolutely ideal conditions on the expressway while coming back - early morning, low road temperature, low traffic, warmed up engine, and most importantly - nobody else in the car whose life would be my responsibility. The expressway and the car would be all to myself. I realized that I may not get such an opportunity to strike 2 birds in a single stone, again.

That day, I left Pune early in the morning, 3:45am, if I remember correctly. I could barely contain my excitement, and could hardly sleep the night before. Even though alarm was set, I got up on instinct, before the alarm went off, and got ready quickly. In no time, my car was on expressway. I had decided to keep it steady while going towards Mumbai, since it was a dark night, and visibility obviously was poor. I was going to cut lose while coming back anyway, so I rather concentrated on getting to the destination, picking up the tablet and then getting back on expressway as quickly as possible, before the Mumbai traffic could bite me.

I reached Filmcity by 6:15am - 2 hours 30 mins door-to-door from Kothrud to Goregaon Fimcity. This was largely thanks to the sometimes-awesome-sometimes-horrible-but-this-time-awesome GPS navigator - Motonav in my Moto Milestone. The maps are probably from MapMyIndia, and the app routed like a charm. That app has been my guiding light in quite a few occasions now, and it has faithfully got me out every time.

After completing the transaction and picking up the tablet, I left Filmcity by 7:15am, took a wrong-turn earlier than the GPS suggested, and then wasted 5-10 minutes further till it got me back on the right route. By the time I reached Vashi toll booth, the sun had already risen up, and it was neither hot, nor chilled - just a pleasant morning with a cool breeze flirting shyly across the face. I was taking in all that while driving in the high speed lane, when I noticed an Innova honking behind me. Before I realized the reason, he changed his lane, cut me in, and then started choking me behind him, as a revenge. That was the kind of provocation I needed when I was all propped up for a high speed blast on expressway in few minutes. I cut in 2 lanes to my left in a wild single swoop, like the auto drivers recklessly do in Pune. Unlike the auto drivers though, I wasn't reckless, but had my eyes on both the rear view mirrors. Again switched one more lane to the left to avoid a bus in front, and was racing parallel to the Innova in no time while cutting through the traffic. But my Palio's 2nd and 3rd gear proved too much for the Innova guy. In a few moments, he was in my rear view mirror, and though he tried a lot to race me, he could never see anything but my car's tail-lights after that.

First it was the cool breeze, and then the pleasure of comprehensively beating a highway bully on his provocation, that set the tone for the expressway for me. I was hyper excited since the plan had worked well and I was on schedule. I was in right frame of mind, with all conditions favorable, to take the final plunge.

I joined the expressway by around 8:15am. Cut through the initial "slow-moving" traffic and once the stretch was long and inviting enough, I cut lose. This was the moment I was waiting for. I built up the speed right from 2nd gear; flirting with the red mark on the RPM gauge. Soon I was racing with the wind. A Swift Desire (VDI if I remember correctly) tried to race with me, in vain. He never made it to the front and gave up trying around 140kmph mark. I kept on building the speed. I literally whizzed past a lot of cars, which were probably doing a respectable 120-130kmph. I bet they would have wondered if Audi/BMW had started building a hatchback, and since when. ;)

I was comfortably past 160kmph mark now and the car was stable. I kept the peddle floored. 165 - 166 - 167 - 168 ... the progress was a little slow in this band, despite the gas. 170kmph - 171 - 172 ... and I noticed the car was a little wobbly now. The same car which was rock steady in 160s, was noticeably wobbly during the 170s. I had a pair of Bridgestone Turanza ER-60 in the front, which are rated for high speed till 190kmph. But in the rear, I had a pair of old Good-Year Assurance, which I was not very confident about. The wobbliness of the car, added to the lack of trust on the rear tires, created doubt in my mind, and in a flash I took my foot off the gas.

I kept it around 145kmph till I again got a psyche and went till 165kmph just for the fun of it. But in the back of my mind, I had accepted 172kmph as the tops for the day, and felt there was no point in going any further till I get something like Micheline PP2 or Yoko S-Drives on. I had already breached 160kmph, which is the psychological 100mph (miles-per-hour) mark. I had already breached 165kmph which the manual mentions as the top-speed (bollocks!) of Palio Stile 1.6 Sport. And besides, this was an accurate 172kmph speed, since it was measured on the GPS. I am sure if the speedometer in the dashboard was working, it would have hovered somewhere around 180kmph mark, due to inherent measurement errors in the mechanical speedos.

Not a single car overtook me on expressway that day.

I reached home at 9:30am - 1 hour 15 minutes after I took to the expressway, and 2 hours 15 minutes after I left filmcity. In all, I left pune at around 4am in the morning, and came back from the heart of Mumbai on the same day by 9:30am in the same morning. Many didn't trust me on that, but the Cintiq stands a tall witness to the fact.

For a driver who had learned driving 8-months back, achieving 172kmph in a stock car, without any mods, is a booster to be cherished for long time. And cherish it I will. But equally true, it doesn't stand anywhere in comparison with those who have scaled 200kmph and higher in their cars, modified or else, on the same expressway. John Krakauer maps this emotion to words well, when he gets fascinated with the life in Chamonix, in his Eiger Dreams, and muses -

"It's a luminous fall afternoon in downtown Cham,
and I am sitting on the terrace of Brasserie L'M,
loitering over a strawberry crêpes and café au lait,
wondering whether I might, given my limited talents,
ever rise above the life of terminally banal."

High Speed Exploits - 151 kmph

Now that my car is 'official', time for show-off'ing some drives and exploits. First up is the top-speed I clocked while on my trip to Sangli, and back.

While leaving for Sangli, the idea was to stay away from trucks and avoid high speeds, as I had learnt driving only a month ago. But when the road gets smooth, when the excessive traffic withers away and the long stretch of lane seems vacant to quite a distance, the eternal etch appears from nowhere and throttle starts feeling the pressure.

While on the way to Sangli, initially, when I was seduced, the aim was to break free of the 125kmph mark that I had reached on my Apache. It's a shame if a car cannot comfortably outperform a bike. And comfortably it did, thanks to those 100 horses under the hood. I was quickly onto 130kmph. Now that blood was tasted, and the car showed absolutely no indication of backing up, with no vibrations or loss of steering/control, in no time the target was remapped to 150kmph. I did reach 144kmph in few seconds, and there was quite a bit of distance till I could go full-throttle with the A-pad touching the floor ... but ... there were those cars, around 500 meters from me, braking frantically to avoid potholes! For a moment, there was this intense desire to go full-throttle, attain 150kmph and then brake full; but these are the moments where your mind should rule over your heart, for you to get a second chance at attaining your target. Thankfully mine did. A-pad was released, B-pad and C-pad in action with quick shifting of gears, to bring in engine braking to aid the B-pad. From 144kmph, I dropped to 2-kmph with around 5-10 feet to spare from the car in front. I noticed it was a cherry-red Maruti Ritz, and I wished I had banged into her rear with full might, instead of sparing her. I just hate her pathetic looking rear. Wonder what Maruti Suzuki people were smoking while designing cars like Ritz and A-Star. And let's not even talk about Wagon-R.

After that, I didn't get a chance to speed up till I reached home. So 144kmph remained an eye-sour throughout the weekend. I kept whining, and looking forward to the return journey.

Came Monday morning, and in an hour of sedate driving to warm-up the engine, I reached Peth and took to the NH4, like a fish to water. In next few seconds, I was into 130 kmph, inching towards the target. There was quite a bit of traffic than usual, but it was in the middle lane. Even the bus/asiad drivers, who have this nasty and irritating habit of choking the high speed lane with 60kmph speed, were considerate enough to take to the middle lane. The high speed lane was empty for quite a long stretch, and that was enough of a bait for me. I stepped on the gas. 140 - 145 -147 -148 - 149 - 150(!!) - 151 - danger-ahead - brakes - down to 130 - 125 - 115 - cruise. I saw Karad flyover. You don't realise how time and distance passes by when your mind is fully onto something else.


Speed was down to a more of 60'ish owing to pedestrians and traffic congestion near the flyover. And I spotted a traffic police waving at me, asking me to stop. After assessing presence of all car-related documents in the car, I slowed down to see what he wants. He wasn't going to get a bribe from me, that was for sure. But he turned out to be a highway police, asking for a ride to a toll-booth where there was going to be a रास्ता-रोको (road-blockage) to protest against rise in tolls across NH4 toll booths. So all my plans of breaking the 160kmph barrier, and more importantly, breaking the 3-hrs Sangli-Pune record of my bike, dissolved into thin air. He was approaching retirement, so I kept the car near a more descent 100kmph mark to avoid making him uncomfortable with the speed, and to avoid getting a lecture on how high speeds cause accidents and how this current generation is being reckless etc etc.

I dropped him around 100kms from Pune, and after that, due to morning traffic, there was no chance to speed up. 100-120 kmph is what you can get and maintain max.

At a hindsight, I cant help but praise the car like anything. I have read/heard stories of how sedans like Esteem start vibrating during the 140 kmph mark. This car, totally living up to her reputation, didn't even make me feel like I am doing high speed. Only the blurring trees in the corner of my eyes, made me appreciate the kind of speed I was into. My heart was beating quite normal despite the adrenaline surge.

Next up on the radar is the Mecca of a speed-junkie - The Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Top speed of a Palio is said to be capped at 165kmph. From my assessment at 151 kmph, I feel it can do much more than that. My black beauty, owing to those 100 bhp, should be able to make it to 175-180.

My job will be to take this horse to water. Let's see how much she drinks.

An Affaire with an Italian Beauty

Sleepless nights of endless research, the eternal state of confusion and two-minds, shaky hands while making the deal (for the fear of being deceived due to lack of car-knowledge), choking secrecy (to give a surprise to my parents), month-long painful patience while learning to drive and the BITS MS exam that only tested the level of my patience; after all this trouble, finally it's official. I got a car couple months back - the much sought after - Fiat Palio Stile 1.6 Sports. It's a scorcher, rest assured.

I had to hold back blogging about couple of quality drives due to the secrecy.

Finally last weekend, I drove the car to Sangli. Told my parents that I have quite a bit of luggage in the rickshaw, so come down on the street to help me pick it up. They did come down waiting for a rickshaw, and when a black beauty approached them, by chance they had a look at the driver, and they couldn't decide if that was a dream or a reality. It was their son, driving that beautiful car.

My dad kept asking me - "tell me the truth, who's car is this? कुणाची कार घेउन आलायस ही??". I had to show him the RC for him to believe that it's my own car in reality! After an hour, mom was still doing in-and-out on the terrace to check the car out. What was needed was somebody secretly filming the whole episode. It was fabulous.

My dad never gets perturbed by surprises. He remains quite composed. But that day, he was bowled. Mouth open. It was a bigger shock for both of them because they didn't even know that I can drive a car now.

Last two months - July and August - have been, without a doubt, the busiest and hectic-most times of my life till date. All those troubles and tortures of those times, were all worth it. I had expected huge cheers from my parents on this surprise, but the extent of it, I had grossly under-estimated.

Enough of emotions, now on to some stats about the car. As I said, it's the much sought after hatchback in the used car segment (along with the yellow S10). It's a top-end Sports edition of a 2008 model, black Palio Stile with 1.6 litre engine, producing 100BHP of power. Such a scorcher of a car, which had run merely 40k kms in 2yrs, I got it for peanuts, compared to it's on-road price of around 5.5lacs at the time of purchase. This, thanks to the very low resale value of Fiat cars in general, and Palios in specific.

Many people criticised me for buying a used car, which is discontinued now, with the bad reputation of Fiat-TATA after-sales-service on the back, and which is known for its low mileage. A lot of these bad vibes about the Fiat cars, IMO, is more of a FUD campaign - Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Of-course there are problems with the car and the service, but they are not soooo significant, for these cars, built like a tank, to deserve peanuts in resale value. I was convinced. And Warren Buffet's principle about stock market, convinced my other paranoid mind. "Be fearful when people are greedy; and be greedy when people are fearful". In pre-owned cars market, prices clearly tell this story - people lust after a Maruti, while they are very fearful of a Fiat. My choice was clear.

Besides, it was a love at first sight for me with regards to this car. And then, good, trust-worthy middleman, clear norms about deal-making and positive outcome during check-up at Pandit Auto made it easier for me.

All in all, here she stands at my door. I have driven her for around a 1000kms now, but apart from a minute chuk-chuk sound (which is suspected to be a WA/WB issue), she has been delightful till date. The handling, steering feedback, total assurance of control at very high speeds and acceptable mileage being the highlights. This deal has probably been the best value-proposition I have accepted till date.

Somebody on Team-BHP has summed up emotions towards Palio very succinctly -
"One thing you have to keep in mind when you buy a Palio. True Italian beauty that she is, expect her to be temperamental; needing love and attention, unlike the German/Korean and Japanese."